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Cirrus Aircraft Parachutes Save Airplanes, Pilots
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NPR's Robert Siegel talks with Alan Klapmeier, CEO and co-founder of Cirrus Aircraft, which makes an airplane equipped with its own parachute. Over the past week, two different Cirrus pilots encountered in-flight emergencies and brought their planes safely to the ground by deploying their on-board parachutes -- only the second and third emergency uses of the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS). This technology was first used in an emergency in October 2002.
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