I worked for a while in the Flight Test department at Cirrus Aircraft, the manufacturer who is probably best known for these systems (all planes they manufacture come with them). The picture on the right side of the Wikipedia page is of one of their first tests of the system. The test pilot who did that exact pictured test told me that it was a pretty exciting experience; they had done all the calculations and static load tests possible, but they couldn't be sure exactly what would happen until the 'pulled the handle' for the first time. The parachute straps could have pulled out of their mounting points, the parachute could have failed to fully inflate or gotten tangled on the empennage, etc. The test pilot had to wear his own parachute in case things went badly and he had to bail out of the plane (the test plane had a special system to blow the doors off to facility emergency egress). Happily it worked well, although the deployment is a little bumpy :) The chute system has a mechanically-activated rocket that busts out a panel over the chute tube which is intentionally weakly mounted, and then proceeds to pull the uninflated chute fully out through the open hole about 100 feet, and then there's a special 'slow-inflation' ring on the chute rigging to slow down the inflation of the chute so that it doesn't put excessive force on the chute mounting and/or hurt the passengers. To prevent serious injury to the passengers when the plane hits the ground (it's still moving at a good clip), the seatbelts have airbags and the base of the seat is a few inches of aluminum honeycomb to absorb energy. The landing gear and wings are also designed to fracture/crush in a way that reduces the amount of force transmitted to the passengers. Although it's not uncommon to walk away with broken limbs or some sort of back pain, it's better than the alternative :) Cirrus is currently working on a Very Light Jet, the 5-person + 2kid Vision SF50 (http://cirrusaircraft.com/vision/) which also has a parachute - but it's a lot bigger than the ones on their existing 4-person SR-20/22 prop planes! I can try to answer any questions as best as I can remember...
I have a somewhat off topic question about airplane companies' attitude towards engines. As a private pilot who flies Cirruses, it's always baffled me that a FADEC is not standard equipment. For non-pilots, starting a plane requires priming the engine by injecting fuel into the lines, and fiddling with the fuel/air mixture until the engine fires. Totally different from a modern car where a computer electronically controls the injection to get the engine started almost immediately. Is the attitude in the industry still that FADECs are dangerous because of bugs/malfunctions? Or is it more of a certification issue?
Well the new jet has dual FADECs, so you can solve your problem by buying one of them :) I think that for the piston plane market, it's more of a cost/value ratio issue - would you (and customers in general) be willing to pay an extra $50-100k for a FADEC-equipped plane that costs $500k for the whole rest of the plane, just to have the convenience of eliminating manual mixture control? Also some pilots don't want to give up having the ability to control engine temp, power, fuel burn rate, etc manually using the mixture. I know that FADEC-equipped engines have been tested, and will probably be available in the future, it's more of a question of marketing and costs (certification etc) than anything technical.
Fellow Cirrus owner here. My assumption has always been the deterrents are cost (both development and production; many fewer engines to amortize over) and reliability (if you lose all electrical power in a FADEC system, the engine dies; not so with magnetos).
For FADECs on single engine piston planes, in addition to being powered by either alternator automatically, there's usually a dedicated FADEC emergency battery good enough for 1+ hours of engine runtime.
Understood :) As a fun note, i just remembered that the emergency FADEC power on the turbine engines is provided by a tiny hydro generator powered by the fuel flow itself, so it can run in case of total electrical failure. The throttle position sensors are energized by the same emergency circuit so they continue to work too :)
