COSTILLA COUNTY — At about 9:15 a.m. on Thursday morning, the Costilla County Sheriff’s Office received a call of a private plane that encountered engine failure and  crashed in the area of Mesita, south of San Luis near the Rio Grande.

No one on the ground was injured.

Sheriff Danny Sanchez, who was in the area and responded to the call, said that three people were on board – a student pilot, a pilot instructor and the pilot’s wife.  The pilot’s wife was transported by ambulance to a local hospital with possible back injuries. The pilot instructor was also transported as a precautionary measure, and the student pilot was not injured.

Sanchez said a key factor in the crash was that the pilot manually deployed a parachute, which kept the crash from being much worse than it could have been. He added that he has seen private aircraft equipped with parachutes before.

In this case, the plane was a single engine Cirrus SR22, which seats three people plus the pilot. Cirrus Aircraft are unique in that they were the first aircraft to come equipped with a factory installed Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS) – a ballistic whole-plane parachute system that is manually deployed in the event that the plane experiences a catastrophic failure. The purpose is to protect the pilot and passengers, which has greatly improved crash outcomes since it was approved by the FAA in 1998.

According to Cirrus Aircraft, as of June 2025, 247 people have “been saved” by CAPS.

The pilot told Sheriff Sanchez that they were “on a leisurely flight” and were headed back to Santa Fe when they encountered engine failure.

As of 1:00 p.m., the sheriff said NTSB and the FAA were not yet on the scene but were expected to arrive soon.