Klapmeier brothers

The Klapmeier brothers, Alan Lee Klapmeier (born October 6, 1958) and Dale Edward Klapmeier (born July 2, 1961), are retired American aircraft designers and aviation entrepreneurs who together founded the Cirrus Design Corporation in 1984. Under the leadership of the Klapmeiers, Cirrus was the first aircraft manufacturer to install a whole-plane parachute recovery system as a standard on all its models—designed to lower the airplane (and occupants) safely to the ground in case of an emergency. The device is attributed with saving over 200 lives to date. From the brothers' use of all-composite airframe construction and glass panel cockpits on production aircraft, Cirrus is known for having revolutionized general aviation for modern light aircraft pilots.

Forbes magazine named Cirrus's highly popular single-engine SR-series (the SR20 and SR22, certified in 1998 and 2000 respectively) Best Private Airplane, saying "the Klapmeier brothers built the first genuinely new plane in the sky in many years", Time magazine regarded them as "giving lift to the small-plane industry with an easy-to-fly design", and Flying magazine ranked Alan and Dale at number 17 on its list of the 51 Heroes of Aviation; they are the two youngest and highest-ranked living people on the list. In 2014, the Klapmeier brothers were inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame.

The brothers started Cirrus in the basement of their parents' rural dairy barn near Baraboo, Wisconsin. Their first design, the VK-30 homebuilt aircraft, was introduced in 1987, although sales of the kit fluctuated and deliveries ultimately ended only a few years later. As the company grew they moved it in 1994 to Duluth, Minnesota, where from 2003 until his departure from Cirrus in 2009, Alan had heavy influence over the early design and development of the Vision Jet. Dale then continued the program, leading it to certification in 2016 and production in the ensuing years. The aircraft won the Collier Trophy in 2018 for representing the first jet of its kind to enter the market.

After Cirrus, Alan became CEO of Kestrel Aircraft in 2010, which merged with Eclipse Aerospace in 2015 to form One Aviation. The company ceased operations in 2021. Dale remains at Cirrus as a senior advisor and served as its CEO from 2011 to 2019.

Alan and Dale Klapmeier grew up in DeKalb, Illinois and attended DeKalb High School. Their parents bought a second home in the early 1970s on a small, rural farm near Baraboo, Wisconsin. Aviation was a part of the brothers' lives from a very early age. Alan told Airport Journals in 2006 that when he was a baby, the only way his mother could get him to stop crying at times was to bring him to an airport and park the car at the end of the runway so he could watch airplanes; a tradition she continued with Dale soon after his birth as well. The brothers frequently built model airplanes as young children and rode their bicycles to local airports. When Dale reached the age of 15, he learned to fly in a Cessna 140 before learning to drive a car. Alan joined the Civil Air Patrol at age 17 as a way of receiving more affordable flying lessons. In his youth he often spoke about how he and his younger brother would one day design and build aircraft that would compete with Cessna.

Alan and Dale are two of three children born to Larry and Carol Klapmeier. They come from an entrepreneurial family. The eldest brother, Ernie Klapmeier, opened his own accessory store of military reenactment goods and regalia in Aurora, Illinois and managed the shop for many years since its founding in 1997; their uncle, Jim Klapmeier, and grandfather, Elmer Klapmeier, were both entrepreneurs in the boat-manufacturing industry and started as a two-person company building pontoon-like houseboats on Rainy Lake, Minnesota throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. Elmer ran a second business flying a "puddle jumper" plane around Wisconsin delivering parts to dairy farmers, while Jim later moved the boat project to a facility in Mora, Minnesota where he grew and retained it for several decades, transitioning into the market of fiberglass motor yachts.

Larry and Carol were also entrepreneurs who founded a successful nursing home near Chicago, at which the three brothers worked as kids doing janitorial chores during the 1960s and 1970s.

Alan graduated in 1980 from Wisconsin's Ripon College with degrees in physics and economics. While a senior there in 1979, he began developing sketches of an airplane that would become the Cirrus VK-30, and worked for more than three years in the Ripon admissions office while Dale finished college. The two began making foam models of the VK-30 in 1980, and in 1983, Dale graduated from the University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point with degrees in business administration and economics. He once said that his fall-back plan was to become a banker had their early career in aviation never succeeded.