Originally Posted by
rolling20
Beagle, I am guessing this one would have been around your time on the Bulldog?
https://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=137257. The poor instructor fell from his harness on the descent. IIRC, but Beagle please correct me, you undid your chute harness first ,before the safety harness at the end of the sortie? The enquiry believed he had released it prior to abandonment. When the 82 spinning loss took place we were all drilled on quick abandonment. One of the star pupil flyers and who later became a CFS instructor, 'banged out' in the hangar sans parachute, with the words, ' I think I had better do that again!' We thought it funny at the time.
During my time as a Bulldog QFI (late 80s/early 90s) the engineering powers on high had become concerned that parachute packs were suffering wear in normal use. To reduce wear on the packs we were instructed to remove our parachutes before exiting the aircraft, either after shutdown or during a running crew change. We were required to sign for carrying out a practice "emergency abandonment drill" every month.
I point blank refused to
ever remove my parachute harness in the aircraft because I saw it as a highly unsafe practice. Mental conditioning to routinely undo the parachute harness before climbing out was just asking for trouble, imho, so I practiced my abandonment drill every I climbed out. There was another, later fatal loss of control accident when it was thought that the instructor inadvertently unlocked his 'chute harness (box rotated by 90 degrees) before abandoning the aircraft and that the QRB was knocked during his subsequent parachute descent, whereupon he tragically fell out of his harness.