Originally Posted by SN3Guppy
That particular jump occured in strong winds in mountainous terrain with a lot of desert plants such as cactus, and the impact point was on a cliff. Not normal conditions for sport skydives, and an unfortunate result of several culminating events which don't need discussion right now.
I'd have loved to have been a fly on the wall at the briefing for that one. "The wind is Oh-Sh!t knots gusting Dear-Sweet-Lord knots, the cactus plants are here, here and
here, and the northern edge of the drop zone is roughly 800 feet higher than the southern edge. Any questions?"
Originally Posted by SN3Guppy
I've experienced forced landings, inflight engine and equipment failures, aircraft fires, and other inflight and ground emergencies...do these then mean one shouldn't engage in flight in an airplane?
Well, that depends on the period of time over which these events occurred - if as I understand, they were over several decades and several tens of thousands of hours of flight time, then I think we can just put that down to the law of averages; if, on the other hand, they were all to occur within the space of a couple of weeks, then I'd say there would be a ground frost in Hell before I'd get in an airframe maintained by your engineering organisation, and in fact that the firearms which you tell us you're licensed to hold might well be used to good effect on the individuals within that organisation.