As a relatively new jumper with 500 skydives and 50 BASE jumps, this BASE jumper nearly made a fatal mistake on his 51st BASE jump in a tracking suit.

He decided mid-flight that he would try to fly over the edge of the cliff below the exit point, despite being a bit too low, and he got fixated on his new target instead of focusing on flying past it. Once he realized he was in trouble, he thought he was in a no-pull zone, so he waited until he cleared the edge of the cliff before pulling. He had a 90 degree right turn on opening, and luckily he landed safely with very little room to spare.

This is an incident you don’t see too often: a wingsuit flat spin and a “zipper malfunction” — although I think it was the result of human error and not a defect with the zipper (and not to be confused with a “choo lace malfunction”).

It starts off with a wingsuiter transitioning to his back, which turns into a flat spin at 10,000 feet. He collapses his wings to stop the spin, but his left booty comes off his foot and the leg zippers begin to open as the tail flaps in the wind.

This is either a demonstration of zero f#@&$ given or a new water training method. Hard to tell 😉

Whoa, talk about ground rush! A spicy slider down, handheld BASE jump into a 200 foot cave doesn't leave much margin for error — or for flaring — but I guess the ground is always there to break your fall 😉 For those of you who are curious, this is the Devetashka cave in Bulgaria.

A strange malfunction and a standard cutaway turns into a messy reserve deployment, which escalates into a scary situation for this wingsuit pilot.

The malfunction on the main parachute appears to be a tension knot, but it was actually caused by one of the silicone protectors (which cover/protect the connector links) that came loose and worked its way up the lines.

He had a clean cutaway at 1,800 feet, but his body position (and possibly the burble created by the wingsuit) caused asymmetrical line stretch on the reserve deployment, which turned into spinning line twists. Yikes! Fortunately he managed to kick out of the line twists for a safe reserve landing.

Dominic's conclusion and suggestions based on his incident: better equipment awareness and body position, pull high enough and use the biggest reserve size possible when flying big wingsuits.

Gear Specs:
- Container: SIFE RT
- Main Canopy: Epicene 135
- Reserve Canopy: OP 126
- Wingsuit: Squirrel Freak
- RSL / Skyhook / MARD: None

Thanks to Dominic for sharing his video and information about the malfunction(s) so that others can learn from this incident.

Consider yourself lucky when your life is literally saved by landing on an umbrella and a car, which is exactly what happened to Rafael Schwaiger while swooping his Petra 69 canopy (2.8 wingload).

His Cypres AAD was set to the wrong mode ("Expert" mode instead of "Speed" mode), which caused an unexpected AAD fire on his high speed landing and automatically deployed his reserve parachute mid-swoop. He was lucky enough to land on an umbrella covering the cars in the parking lot, which literally saved his life.

Raf humbly admits that this incident was caused by human error due to incorrect settings on the AAD, which serves as an important reminder to check your gear and AAD settings, especially when flying high-performance canopies.

A group of skydivers were learning the basics of angle flying and one of the jumpers was hit from behind in the back of the head/neck. Fortunately it wasn't an aggressive angle jump at faster speeds, which could've resulted in a broken neck or being knocked unconscious.

It's important to remember that "level, slot, dock" applies to any orientation, whether you're angle flying, freeflying or on your belly.

Sometimes, all you can say is "sorry," especially when you accidentally pull your friend's cutaway handle on exit. The "victim" had no choice but to go for a ride on his reserve parachute; luckily it was a safe landing and a just funny mug shot in an otherwise scary situation.

A good reminder to be careful how and where you grab someone's rig when doing linked exits.

This old video will never get old.

Target fixation and lack of situational awareness nearly caused this swooper to plow through power lines. Here's what he had to say about the incident: "Uneven leg straps caused an unexpected lack of a reaction from the canopy when my normal harness input was made. As a last resort I grabbed a handful of rear riser to finish the turn. Fixation on the landing zone and lack of situational awareness caused this. If I found myself in the same situation I would've made a controlled flat-ish toggle turn and made the LZ."