This 5-way freefly jump had an uncomfortable amount of separation — both vertically and horizontally — between the jumpers, with only two of them flying close to each other. As those two jumpers broke off, another jumper appeared out of nowhere with their canopy in mid-deployment! No separation. No awareness. Not cool.
Approximately fifteen seconds into the video we see that one jumper is notably high above the rest of the group. We are assuming that’s the person who came down and deployed in close proximity at breakoff. When a jumper is off level with the rest of the group it makes it incredibly difficult for the rest of the group to remain aware of their position and, vice versa, it makes it harder for the jumper to know where everyone else in the group is.
The fact that this was at minimum a five-way vertical jump where only two people got together raises serious questions about whether this jump should have been attempted in the first place. When multiple jumpers who are not able to stay on level and in proximity to each other decide to skydive together, it can be a recipe for disaster. Keep groups small until you can jump safely with one another.
If you get off level from the other jumpers in your group, your only job until breakoff altitude is to get back on level — either with the rest of the group or with whomever chose to be the "base" for the jump. As you do so, you also need to maintain awareness of where the group is so that you don’t come barreling into them like a meat missile.
The jumper whose perspective we are viewing did very little to track away after he and his partner in the white/red jumpsuit broke off. Unless planned, failing to track is a dangerous practice because others will not be expecting you to pitch in place.
This skydiver pitched her pilot chute while riding a wingsuit rodeo, but the pilot chute got caught in the wingsuit’s burble and wrapped itself around the jumper’s neck. She unwrapped it but, again, it caught around her neck a second time! She was able to clear the bridle from her neck and the main deployed — albeit with a snappy opening and a few line twists.
The burble created by the wake of wingsuit is far wider and longer than many people think. This is why wingsuiters use longer bridles and are taught to have a confident and strong pitch when deploying their canopy. In this incident, the rodeo rider did not have a longer bridle and her pilot chute got caught in the wingsuit's large burble.
This jumper noted that before going up, she had discussed the dive flow and said she would get off the wingsuiter before deploying her main. She was – correctly – concerned about the burble. However, the wingsuiter told her not to worry about it and that she would be fine. Her instincts and logic were right. Had she stuck with her gut feeling and dismounted the wingsuiter before throwing her pilot chute, this incident would not have occurred.
Wingsuit rodeos seem to have become increasingly common over recent years. As that has occurred, there appears to be a trend towards letting jumpers of relatively low experience participate in them. Fortunately, that was not the case in this video. This was an experienced and skilled skydiver who knew the dynamics of the jump, and – given the potential for what could have been a fatal injury – did an amazing job dealing with the situation. A newer jumper would potentially have not been able to remain as calm and this situation could have ended very differently.
After a fun belly jump flying through a hula hoop with friends, this skydiver tracked away – albeit a bit weakly – and pitched. Her canopy deployed but it was an unstable mess that turned into line twists and quickly began diving down, which almost resulted in a canopy collision (48 second mark)!
The jumper, who has been in the sport for less than a year but has over 300 jumps, had previously been chastised for chopping a canopy that others told her she could have landed. With those criticisms in mind, she kept fighting the malfunction – for roughly 25 seconds – until her audible altimeter told her she was at her hard deck. At that time, she cutaway her main and landed her reserve.
The jumper notes that her brakes were stowed but had not been set. She had been using a packer and believed that they would set her brakes for her. The failure to set the brakes may have contributed to the tension knots that prevented her canopy from inflating normally.
The debate between packers and jumpers regarding who should be setting the brakes has been around a long time and we’re not going to settle it here. Ultimately, it’s everyone’s responsibility to keep themselves and those around them safe.
As a jumper, you should be doing everything you can to set yourself up for success and that includes making your packer’s life easier by doing the small things like setting your brakes and uncollapsing your slider.
As a packer, you have an implied responsibility for that pack job, and you should always check to see if the jumper did those small things. If they keep forgetting to do those things, you can always just tell them that they should find someone else to pack their canopy.
This fun little rhyme comes from the USPA and this jump highlights what they’re talking about. Once you know there’s no saving your canopy, don’t mess around and fight it for longer than you have to. This jumper spent approximately TWENTY FIVE SECONDS fighting something that she knew wasn’t stable and wasn’t square. Had her reserve had a malfunction; had she needed to find a safe place to land in an area that wasn’t all agricultural fields; had she had a hard time pulling her cutaway handle, she would have had less time to deal with those issues.
In our minds, one of the biggest points this video brings up is the fact that this was a newer jumper who had been harshly criticized, early in her skydiving career, for having chopped a canopy others thought she could have landed. To the keyboard warriors who engage in discussions like that, please stop. You weren’t in the jumper’s shoes and if they’re willing to risk losing a few thousand dollars of nylon to save their own lives, who are you to judge them? They did what they thought they needed to do to stay alive and that is almost always a decision that should be commended.
A jumper was sitting against the controls in a small aircraft and, as they got up to exit, their reserve pilot chute deployed in the plane! They didn't realize the situation, but another jumper grabbed the pilot chute and threw it out the door as the jumper got off the step. WOW.
This skydiver wasn’t paying attention to what he was resting his rig against and did not think to check whether something on the instrument panel (pretty much a million little snag hazards) could have hooked his equipment. Consequently, he failed to realize that his reserve pilot chute was out.
These jumpers were sitting in a plane approaching jump run and, at no point, did they do any sort of gear checks. They simply waited for the pilot to call “door” and started climbing out.
Anytime a jumper is leaning against something in an aircraft, their first instinct upon moving should be to check to ensure nothing was dislodged or snagged. Also, if you’re in a plane and sitting against the instrument panel, you might want to avoid rubbing against all the magic knobs and switches that keep a bunch of metal in the air 😉
A few thousand feet before exit altitude, everyone should be getting up, checking their gear, checking their buddy’s gear, etc. If the group ahead of you is planning on sitting there until the red light comes on, feel free to encourage them to get off their butts.
The second jumper noticed what had happened, grabbed the pilot chute and tossed it out with the jumper. Another jumper who watched this video believed the proper decision would have been to grab the jumper before they climbed out, closed the door, and flown the plane down (like this other incident). It’s hard to see if that was an option and the quick decision to make sure the pilot chute exited the aircraft cleanly was arguably a good call.
This jumper deployed his main canopy, but it inflated with some pretty messy twists that were, initially, far up the lines. They came down closer to the jumper and he attempted to clear them for approximately ten seconds but, as his canopy began diving rather aggressively, he decided to cut away his main. His reserve deployed but it also opened into some heavy line twists but, fortunately, he was able to get out of them and land his reserve canopy safely.
The 360-degree camera angle may be slightly misleading, but it appears that this jumper’s body position was slightly asymmetric. It’s particularly visible when he throws his pilot chute forward aggressively. This likely created those line twists. His risers consequently being asymmetric was likely also the cause of his canopy going into a diving spin.
During deployment, especially with smaller and more aggressive canopies, a small degree of body rotation can result in deployment issues. By taking just a half second and ensuring that their body remains in a neutral and symmetric position, a jumper can drastically reduce the chance that their deployment will result in line twists.
When this jumper went to pull his cutaway handle, he initially reached way too far down his torso. He had to run his hands down from near his belly button all the way back up to where the handle was seated. This is an excellent example of why it’s important to do handle checks to create muscle memory regarding where you should reach. (Admittedly, during this type of spin the harness has likely shifted a bit away from where it is on the ground!) This is also a great explanation of why instructors often harp on looking down and seeing the handle as you’re reaching for it.
This is a very unique situation you don't see very often — or ever. The last skydiver out of the plane diving towards the group, who were attempting to build a BFR (Big F*$@ing Round), had a prosthetic leg. As air started to get under the prosthetic, it caused him to start spinning out of control and forced him to deploy his main parachute early. (We’re assuming he was concerned about the prosthetic coming off mid-air.) Very fortunately, there was no one directly above him to catch a premature opening in the face.
While still on the ground, the jumper reportedly stated that he had “never jumped without a jumpsuit” before. No one here at Teem has a prosthetic so we can’t personally attest to the potential for one to come off. However, the incident in this video combined with the jumper evidently being worried about the risk of jumping without a jumpsuit, suggests that he knew that there was risk involved in doing so.
Skydiving is all about the minimization of risk. This sport is inherently dangerous, so the only way to make it safer is to find potential hazards and try to eliminate or reduce them as much as possible. This jumper knew about a potential hazard to the point where he brought it up on the ground. Once he established that it was a possible issue, he should have had a moment of honest reflection about it and done what he could to prevent it from being a factor.
Some folks may watch this video and think it’s not serious enough to warrant being featured in our Friday Freakout series. We chose to use it because it’s a unique situation we’ve never seen before and part of the reason we created this series is to foster education and safety. Unique situations like this one may only happen once in a blue moon, but talking about it might make someone more aware of a rare but potentially serious risk in the future.
As this 6-way group started to break off, one of the skydivers fell onto another jumper below him as he flew into their burble. The lower jumper's foot caught their friend's reserve handle, which resulted in a premature reserve parachute opening. The camera flyer was directly above them, and – as can be seen very well in Camera 3’s slow motion shot – they came within feet of making contact. Fortunately, they managed to skim past, and no one was injured.
The space directly above a skydiver is referred to as their burble. It’s considered “dead air.” If you enter into that space, you’re going to lose your ability to fly your body and will come down onto the person below you. When this person flew into their friend’s burble, they also had the bad luck to fall in a way that ended up with their buddy displacing their reserve handle and deploying their reserve.
Simply put, the only likely way this could have been prevented was for the jumper to have maintained slightly better situational awareness and realized that his buddy was right below him. Had he avoided flying into his buddy’s burble, the incidental contact that displaced his reserve handle wouldn’t have occurred.
We’re not sure if this was the case, but the fact that the reserve handle came out from what looks like relatively minimal contact may suggest that the handle was already slightly loose or that the velcro -- which is supposed to keep it seated -- may have been old. If that was the case, it should have been noticed during gear checks and should have been replaced.
During the shot from Camera 2, there’s a white road leading to a red patch of land. Did anyone else, for a half second, think that it was a reserve handle and cable?!
This skydiver deployed into some line twists, which sent his canopy into a dive and had a very close call, nearly colliding with another canopy below him. He decided not to cutaway sooner due to concerns of flying through the lower jumper’s canopy. Once he finally cutaway, he had more line twists on his reserve but managed to kick it out and land safely.
The causes of line twists are always hard to determine, but in this case, it looks like the incident may have been the result of an unstable deployment. When the jumper goes to pitch, they appear to start turning and – if this were combined with a minor packing error – it could have certainly resulted in line twists.
Only seconds after this jumper deployed, the red canopy can be seen almost directly below him (0:20). This suggests that, despite deploying at very different altitudes – 5,000 ft and 4,000 ft, respectively – the lower jumper was nearly above the higher jumper. This could have been the result of either one, or both, jumpers tracking improperly.
Both possible factors in these line twists are basic skydiving concepts which are easy to get complacent about. On every pack job, jumpers need to ensure they don’t rush and don’t get distracted. And on every jump, they need to make sure that they don’t take pitching for granted and consciously ensure to have a good, stable, deployment.
The near collision could have been due to the lower jumper not tracking well enough and deploying under his buddy or due to the higher jumper tracking in the same direction and not realizing he was above someone else. Either way, proper tracking technique – both in terms of making sure to not track in the same direction and making sure to create enough separation – could have prevented this near-collision.
This jumper notes that he saw the red canopy under him and that was why he decided not to cut away earlier. However, at no point did he decide to attempt to communicate his position overhead to the jumper below who, because of the canopy over his head, would have a difficult time seeing him. Because we cannot communicate verbally in freefall, some jumpers forget that we can hear one another under canopy. It’s something typically discussed during night jumps but it’s also an option on any other skydive as well.
Wait for it... waaaaiiiit for iiiittttt! BAM! That came out of nowhere. After leaving very little separation between exits, this second jumper had an uneventful jump, but as he deployed his main canopy, he went screaming through the first jumper’s already-inflated canopy -- and he lost a shoe in the process.
The second jumper pretty much chased the first one out the door, giving less than three seconds of separation. As a result, they were flying right above the first jumper throughout the whole skydive.
As noted, this video didn’t come with any comments from the submitter. However, this type of incident is often caused by a jumper feeling rushed to get out the door or flying up/down jump run.
Maybe the groups in front of them took forever in the door, and they were worried about landing off. Perhaps they were a new jumper, got over excited, and counted too fast. There’s a dozen reasons why they may have rushed to get out. None are a good excuse for this mistake.
If the plane is flying fast enough to justify a 3 second separation between groups (as was the case in this video), that might be a red flag to not be jumping out of it in the first place! Even in a plane traveling at 100 knots ground speed, you should be giving someone around 6 seconds before you exit.
We like dropzones that post an exit separation chart in the plane both in the front and in the back. We love pilots who get on an intercom at the green light and note the ground speed and the separation for everyone on the plane.
Here's a helpful exit separation chart from Skydive Chicago (SDC):
Everyone tends to count too fast. What we think in our heads as “one------two------three------four------five------six” is actually “one!two!three!four!five!six!” There are a few ways to address that issue.
One is to count out loud. By verbalizing one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, etc. and nodding your head to the rhythm of each syllable, you’ll force yourself to slow down.
For newer jumpers, another method is to hold your fingers out in front of your face and count out loud while counting on them; combining verbalization with a physical action also tends to help jumpers slow down their count.
