Cirrus Aircraft has sent an investigative team to Addison, Texas, to look into a report that a repacked Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS) failed to deploy when a pilot pulled the handle late last week. “We did have an incident in Texas at the end of last week that involved a repacked CAPS parachute,” Cirrus spokesman Todd Simmons said in an email to AVweb. “While we understand that an anomaly may have occurred related to extraction of the chute, it is premature to draw any specific conclusions at this point much beyond that.” AVweb contacted the owner’s home Sunday evening but was told he was out for the evening.
According to FlightAware the aircraft left Addison just before 11 a.m. local time on May 16 and returned 36 minutes later. The aircraft in question is 12 years old and as we reported in February the parachute must be repacked at 10-year intervals at a cost of more than $10,000. Simmons said Cirrus is “in the process of working through the investigation to learn what happened” and will have further details later.
