After hearing a few guys chatting about finding pictures of the overhead panel on a CRJ, I went to A.net to waste some time. I came across this picture of the center pedestal. It appears that the big white and yellow handle is to activate some kind of chute. Does anyone know of a Ballistic Recovery System installed on any CRJs?http://www.airliners.net/open.file/220301/L/

no, there is no BRS units on any aircraft that is over 5400 LBSWhat you are seeing is the drag chute deployment handle. This is used exclusivly to save the airframe during the FAA (and other country) certification process, specifically high speed abort testing. This is a post manuf. installed system and is in no way offered on production airframes.

The text under the "remark" box at the bottom the page has some info on this. It's fairly typical to have spin recovery chutes installed on flight test aircraft during the early phases of testing. They wouldn't be found on production aircraft.Dan