Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Skydiving Accident: Likely cause?

Chutes failed to open apparently, ain’t this about unheard of anymore?

https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/18...uring-skydiving-accident-in-upson-county

Covid 19 is unpredictable.

Jumping out of a perfectly good airplane.

#1 cause that.

Mechanical things fail
Humans make mistakes

Try explaining that to a clueless high school student 🙂

My heart goes out to that kid’s family. What a fugging unfortunate and unnecessary tragedy...

Phew!

I was worried it was about your Mom, Birdy!

Still a sad deal though.

Not enough information in the news story for me to tell you what happened with the entire sequence but the bottom line is that the instructor failed to do his job. In tandem skydiving, the instructor is the only one wearing the parachutes (main and reserve); the student is wearing a harness that is attached to the instructor's harness. Though some instructors allow students to activate the main parachute (that is, after the instructor deploys the drogue 'chute shortly after exit from the aircraft) most do everything and the student is just along for the ride. In this case, whoever was designated to deploy the main parachute failed to do so or, due to a packing error, was unable to so. In any case, the instructor lost track of time and failed to deploy the reserve at a safe altitude and the tandem duo hit the ground as the reserve was opening. One must have a set procedure to deal with a main that doesn't open or partially opens and follow it with iron-clad discipline. Doing so saved my life on three occasions some years ago.

RS

Ya I know.


I’m hoping someone who skydives will chime in, specifics on ripe, binding, packing etc....

Someone died up where my mom jumps recently, tried to do some sort of swing or flare coming in, body slammed himself into the ground.

I dated a skydiver for a while. She and her clique were like addicts making a score every time they got set to make a jump. I never went with her because I didn't want to spend the $$, though the idea interested me at the time. I used to enjoy adrenaline sports a lot more before I broke my back (at work). The guys that went up with the girlfriend conveyed a lot to me during bonfires after their jumps.

This is the gist of what they conveyed: Chute packing is both science and art, but the way chutes open is left to 1000 variables, and inevitably, there are "failures" to open or inflate properly. Panicking is never your friend in such cases, as the backup chute is another opportunity with near the same odds of working properly as the main chute. I was told that when someone hits the ground, it's because they either didn't release their main chute properly after it failed or they didn't deploy their E chute in time. None of the guys had ever had a main chute fail to open. They could have been full of it, but I knew that between the 7 of them, they had over 500 jumps. One guy, btw, was in crutches when I first met him because he landed wrong and shattered his tibia.

I have parachuted at that airport. I made five static line jumps from a Cessna at 2,800 feet.
At that time they did not offer tandem jumps. We had a main, and a reserve, and we were on our own.

I must say, I have done some dangerous stuff but climbing out on the strut of that little airplane, a half a mile above the earth, was really scary.

Very sad story I will keep an eye on it in the Atlanta news and see if they give a report on what went wrong. Horrible, sixty second nightmare for that little college girl once she realized she was going to die. Very sad.

Concur. If you don’t jump out you don’t have to worry about a chute.

When I was still jumping, I was a Tandem master in addition to other teaching certs. Tandem rigs were required to have an automatic opening device (AOD), that should have fired the reserve if it passed a certain altitude at a certain speed. Without knowing all the details, what I got from the article was the following. Main chute probably deployed but did not open properly. This would cause a spin in most all cases (noted in article) Procedure would be to release the main chute before deploying the reserve. Making sure the reserve had clean air to open into. Reserve handle was actually tied to the main chute riser on my rigs and should have deployed the reserve if the main was released. My guess is the main did give what we called a wrap. (not open cleanly) This might have slowed decent enough to keep the AOD from firing. Instructor gets caught up in trying to clear the wrap and gets too low before deploying the reserve. Alternatively, the release did not work for some reason and instructor had no choice but to deploy the reserve into the fowled main about. Reserve wraps around the fowled up main and neither can deploy properly. Just a guess but fits the few things known from the article.

That sounds about right. It's surprising how many are afraid of jettisoning their fouled first chute. You also need to give it a little time before deploying the secondary.

Such is life.

I think the odds of winning the Powerball are greater than BOTH chutes not deploying correctly.

Terribly saddened to read this, my daughter wants to do a tandem when she turns 18. Says she will do it without our knowledge.

She did some 200ft free fall into a net in Dallas, Tx. Folded up in the net and her knee bonked her in the forehead pretty good. Earned an egg on the noggin for her thrill.

Her nana bout had heart failure when we showed the video to her.

Nana has her own Private Pilot, but is still a pinhead.

The A.D.D. has been around for decades.

Airtec, AAD, Mars, Aviacom, to name a common
few.




There are those that have fear of jumping or
just simple flying, and those that don't fear either.

However far worse than fear of flying/jumping
is being a Covtard... 😂

That was going to land safely.