Washington ? Canadian rancher Albert Kolk’s small plane banked uncontrollably in darkness over the Monashee mountains, then began spiraling toward earth. “Seat belts!” he barked to his teenage grandson and two young friends. Then he reached for a red lever in the cockpit.

Suddenly, an orange-and-white parachute as big as a house opened above the plane and gently landed his stricken aircraft in a rocky clearing.

If the maker of the parachute that saved Kolk’s life this past spring succeeds, one day commercial aircraft like regional commuter jets may have similar safety systems. First, though, there’s the challenge of creating a parachute robust enough to rescue bigger, faster planes.

“Weight and speed are always the challenge,” acknowledged Robert Nelson, chairman of Ballistic Recovery Systems Inc., which sold about 500 of its $16,000 parachute systems this year for use by small private planes and pilots like Kolk.

The company’s most advanced parachute right now can accommodate nearly 4,000 pounds. While small planes can weigh up to 2,000 pounds and cruise about 175 miles per hour, regional jets weigh 80,000 pounds and fly at more than 600 miles per hour.

That’s why Ballistic Recovery Systems is working with NASA — which gave it $670,000 for research — to design a new generation of emergency parachutes that would work on small jets and could be steered by pilots as they drift to the ground.

Kolk, who was piloting his private plane April 8 from Seattle to his ranch in British Columbia, remembered reaching for the parachute handle as his plane slipped into a dangerous flat spin over the mountains in British Columbia, “like how a dog chases its tail.”

A seasoned pilot, Kolk said he had never experienced such a disaster in over a decade of private flying.

An emergency parachute system is deployed on a small private plane. These parachutes, which are used to save an aircraft in distress, are increasingly popular among private pilots. The company that makes them, Ballistic Recovery Systems, believes that these parachutes can be used on some commercial passenger jets.

“I knew I was in trouble. I couldn’t straighten out,” Kolk said. “When that chute opened, it was a peaceful, wonderful feeling.”

Kolk’s experience is one of four cases where parachute-equipped planes landed safely beneath a canopy since U.S. regulators approved the system six years ago. Ballistic Recovery Systems, based in St. Paul, Minn., says eight lives were saved in those four incidents, plus dozens of other people in accidents involving smaller parachute-equipped ultralight planes that resemble motorized gliders.

The parachute, stored behind the rear seats in small planes, is fired with a rocket through the rear windshield; it’s attached with high-strength lines to the plane’s wings, nose and tail.

They are increasingly popular among private pilots, and for good reason: The government said 626 people died in general aviation crashes in 2003, compared with 81 people aboard commercial airlines.

Aviation experts question whether parachutes will ever be attached to the largest passenger jets, such as the Boeing 747, which weighs more than 900,000 pounds. “The speed and weight of those planes would seem to preclude a system like that,” said James Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board.