Plane floated to safety after deploying inbuilt parachute

A specialist parachute designed for an entire light aircraft has allowed three people to make a miraculous escape from a plane crash at Lawson in the Blue Mountains in New South Wales, Australia. The male pilot of the Cirrus aircraft managed to dodge houses and major powerlines before landing the plane in the front yard of a house at Lawson at 2.10pm on Saturday. All those on board escaped serious injury with only one passenger taken to hospital for neck pain. The only damage done was to the house's front fence.



Resident Robert Ross, who watched the incident unfold as he chopped wood in his backyard, said if it was not for the parachute the plane would have crashed into his home. "I looked up and the engine started to splutter ... he got it going again and then it went dead," Mr Ross said. "It then started to go into a spiral. I thought the pilot was going to eject but it all happened too quick. I started yelling out to my wife: 'There's a plane going to crash into the house.' I was shitting myself, then it veered off and crashed about 400 metres away."



Police said the pilot deployed the aircraft's parachute at 1300 metres "following an emergency incident". Sydney Flying Club president Allan Bligh said Cirrus light planes, of which there are about 200 registered in Australia, have a handle in the cockpit which, when pulled, fires off a cover-plate and deploys a parachute. He said it was most likely that Saturday afternoon would have been the first time this pilot would have ever used this system. "Then the aircraft is supposed to drift slowly to the ground but it doesn't always work to that effect - weather and other things can play havoc," Mr Bligh said.


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Mr Ross added it was "luck" and "skill" that no one was badly hurt either on the plane or in the nearby homes. "There was no fire. No explosions," he said. "I reckon the pilot did a good job, possibly with a bit of luck and possibly with a bit of skill." Police said they were investigating the "exact circumstances surrounding the incident". The Cirrus SR22 that crashed is understood to be a demonstration model used to sell the $480,000 planes by an aircraft sales and maintenance company based at Bankstown Airport. It is not known whether the Sydney company was demonstrating the plane to business prospects.