Here are several camera angles of a wingsuit collision in freefall.
The green wingsuit was fixated on the lower group of wingsuiters, and the yellow wingsuit turned into the path of the greeen wingsuit as he was chasing the base. According to the person who submitted this video, the yellow wingsuit has less wingsuit experience and was under the impression that they were flying as base, which would obviously cause some confusion.
Thankfully neither skydiver was injured and both landed safely, but it sounds like it was the perfect storm of everything going wrong at the right time.
A skydiver exits the plane at 8,500 feet and has a premature opening shortly after exit around 7,000 feet.
The bag comes out of the container as he's on his back and the parachute deploys behind him while he's head down. His body rotates forward through the risers, which causes the risers to get twisted in a step-through malfunction.
He does a controllability test and lands his main parachute with the step-through on his twisted risers.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record... pin checks, pin checks, pin checks. Gear checks, gear checks, gear checks. Tight closing loop and BOC, tight closing loop and BOC, tight closing loop and BOC. Pay close attention to where and how you sit in the plane, and avoid rubbing your rig on the plane door as you exit.
These two skydivers were having a little too much fun and decided to keep the party going below their usual deployment altitude. The first jumper had a canopy over his head by 1,600 feet (approx. 500 meters), while the other jumper skimmed passed the opening parachute in freefall and opened by 800 feet (appox. 250 meters). Keep in mind this is GoPro POV, so "objects are closer than they appear" in this video.
Altitude awareness will keep you alive, so it doesn't hurt to use an audible (or two) as a reminder of your altitude, pay attention to your altimeter when you consciously look at it, know your hard deck and practice your emergency procedures.
As skydivers, we can't afford to lose track of altitude in our sport — gravity will always win.
Live and learn.
This freak accident has all the ingredients for a Friday Freakout: a premature parachute opening, a bridle wrapped around a skydiver's foot, a lost shoe, and a ripped parachute with broken lines. Yikes.
On a 5-way exit, Skydiver A has a premature opening as they exit the plane, and the bridle wraps around Skydiver B's foot. It all happens so quickly that Skydiver A was unaware of what was happening until Skydiver B fell below him in freefall with the bridle attached to his foot. Skydiver B was able to kick off his shoe to clear the entangled bridle around his foot before Skydiver A could cutaway.
For Skydiver A, the end result was a snappy premature opening with six tears on the parachute, including a torn end cell, broken lines and line burns all over the canopy. He did a controllability check and the canopy was flying surprisingly normal, so he flew it down from 13,000 feet and landed safely.
For Skydiver B, the end result was a lost shoe.
All in all, a good outcome for an otherwise messy malfunction.
Wingsuit rodeos can be fun, but this one didn't quite turn out as planned — burning through 8,000 feet of altitude in a flat spin definitely wasn't part of the plan.
It's hard to see what happened from this rear-facing POV footage on the wingsuiter, but here's what caused the flat spin: it was a steep (read: head down) exit and once the rodeo rider was ejected, the winguit pilot was head down carving on his back before going into the flat spin, which lasted nearly 8,000 feet before he recovered and deployed his main canopy.
Exit altitude was 13,500 feet. That's a lot of time and altitude for a dizzying flat spin in a wingsuit. Spicy!
A group of skydivers setup a wagon wheel exit in an MI-8 helicopter. One of the skydiver's pilot chute got caught on the seat by the door, and as the wagon wheel rolled out of the helicopter, the bridle wrapped around several skydivers in the group.
Once the group broke apart and all limbs were free of entanglement with the pilot chute, the inevitable premature opening occurred and the canopy deployed without any serious injuries or casualties... minus a lost shoe on deployment. RIP shoe.
This incident could've ended in disaster, but it serves as an important reminder to protect your handles on exit, especially in larger groups.
Some days are better than others — this was not one of those days. This skydiver had a pilot chute in tow, which he was able to clear by pulling his bridle to pop his pin and deploy his main canopy. But wait, there's more... line twists! After burning through some altitude with the pilot chute in tow, he maintains altitude awareness and decides not to fight the line twists and goes for the cutaway.
Line twists suck, especially when the bridle of your reserve is entangled in them! Zero fun. This skydiver's malfunction was caused by a broken closing loop on his reserve as he deployed his main parachute. The reserve bridle quickly wrapped around his main lines, which were in line twists, and he decided to fight it by kicking out of the line twists instead of cutting away.
What would you do in this situation?
This two-out scenario was the result of a low pull followed by an AAD fire (CYPRES), and the skydiver reacted quickly by cutting away the main while it still had separation from the reserve. Here's what the jumper had to say about the incident:
"The jump was done at a DZ that I was visiting for the first time, I attended a standard DZ briefing. The elevation of the DZ is 2000 feet higher than my home DZ and jump run was 10,000 feet instead of 13,000 feet. The first jump of the day was from a helicopter with an exit altitude of 5000 feet. This jump went off flawless. However, something must’ve happened on that jump with my audible altimeter because on the jump in the [two-out] video the audible never made a sound. I found myself on a sit fly jump having lost altitude awareness because of no sound from the audible, and my “internal clock” hadn’t gone off because it didn’t register that I have less free fall time given the lower jump run altitude of the DZ. At 2200 feet, I realized where I was and immediately transitioned from a sit to belly while deploying my main. By that point I was already too low and didn't have line extension until below 1,000 feet, which resulted in a Cypres fire and cutting away my main.
Things to consider:
