To celebrate his 400th jump, this skydiver decided to do a bigway freefly tube jump, which was a bit sketchy and turned into a zoo — bodies everywhere with a lot of vertical and horizontal separation. Once he deployed his main canopy, he discovered it wasn't flyable due to a packing error. However, rather than letting go of the freefly tube to follow standard emergency procedures (EP's) for a clean cutaway, he held on to the tube and attempted a one-handed cutaway and reserve deployment. Fortunately he finally let go of the tube just as the reserve was deploying and he landed safely.
The video is scary because there's a tube involved, but if you watch closely, the tube isn't really involved in the malfunction! This was a straight up packing error! If our translation from French to English was correct (ahem, thanks Google Translate), it sounds like the jumper was anxious about jumping with a tube for the first time and wasn't paying attention while they were packing because they were having conversations about the upcoming tube jump.
It sounds like this jumper was nervous about the tube jump and, because they were so worried about what was going to be happening in the air, they made a serious mistake on the ground while packing. It's okay to think about your jump and visualize what you're going to be doing, but you shouldn't be worrying about the jump when there are other critical steps that require your complete attention. When you're packing or when you're doing gear checks? Those are times when your focus needs to totally be on what you're doing in that moment.
So, this jump probably shouldn't have happened in the first place. Some folks may call us boring or risk-averse, but 400 jumps probably isn't enough for a skydiver to be holding onto a tube. Additionally, almost nothing about this jump suggests that there were enough safety-conscious/experienced jumpers involved. There were two tubes, at least ten or eleven jumpers, half of them were at different levels, and a few were halfway across the sky. This was sketchy and someone like an organizer, S&TA, or DZM should have stepped in and made sure this could be attempted safely.
When getting briefed on the ground, the jumper was told by multiple individuals that, above all else, that they should NOT let go of the tube. Well, that's all well and good when everything is going according to plan, but once things started going awry and they cutaway, they should have let go! There is no reason to keep holding on to a 20-foot piece of fabric that is going to threaten to prevent your reserve canopy from deploying as cleanly as possible. Thankfully, this jumper realized that half a second before they pulled their reserve.
To celebrate his 400th jump, this skydiver decided to do a bigway freefly tube jump, which was a bit sketchy and turned into a zoo — bodies everywhere with a lot of vertical and horizontal separation. Once he deployed his main canopy, he discovered it wasn't flyable due to a packing error. However, rather than letting go of the freefly tube to follow standard emergency procedures (EP's) for a clean cutaway, he held on to the tube and attempted a one-handed cutaway and reserve deployment. Fortunately he finally let go of the tube just as the reserve was deploying and he landed safely.
The video is scary because there's a tube involved, but if you watch closely, the tube isn't really involved in the malfunction! This was a straight up packing error! If our translation from French to English was correct (ahem, thanks Google Translate), it sounds like the jumper was anxious about jumping with a tube for the first time and wasn't paying attention while they were packing because they were having conversations about the upcoming tube jump.
It sounds like this jumper was nervous about the tube jump and, because they were so worried about what was going to be happening in the air, they made a serious mistake on the ground while packing. It's okay to think about your jump and visualize what you're going to be doing, but you shouldn't be worrying about the jump when there are other critical steps that require your complete attention. When you're packing or when you're doing gear checks? Those are times when your focus needs to totally be on what you're doing in that moment.
So, this jump probably shouldn't have happened in the first place. Some folks may call us boring or risk-averse, but 400 jumps probably isn't enough for a skydiver to be holding onto a tube. Additionally, almost nothing about this jump suggests that there were enough safety-conscious/experienced jumpers involved. There were two tubes, at least ten or eleven jumpers, half of them were at different levels, and a few were halfway across the sky. This was sketchy and someone like an organizer, S&TA, or DZM should have stepped in and made sure this could be attempted safely.
When getting briefed on the ground, the jumper was told by multiple individuals that, above all else, that they should NOT let go of the tube. Well, that's all well and good when everything is going according to plan, but once things started going awry and they cutaway, they should have let go! There is no reason to keep holding on to a 20-foot piece of fabric that is going to threaten to prevent your reserve canopy from deploying as cleanly as possible. Thankfully, this jumper realized that half a second before they pulled their reserve.
