The young lad who had the problem was not very experienced, and he f*cked up, no doubt. But what happened next is a credit to the guy on the step and the actions he took.
Other than the canopy not falling out of the container in the first place, this couldn't have ended better, so keep your uninformed opinions to yourself.
I've got to go with RotaryWingB2 on this much of it.
As an experienced skydiver I can honestly say, for better or worse, that I would have taken the same actions if I was in charge of the load. It is in the nature of those who skydive, particularly those who would take a leadership role in a skydiving context, to want to solve any given problem and emerge victorious. And it is drilled into us during skydiving instruction that an uncontrolled canopy deployment inside or immediately outside the aircraft could result in the loss of the aircraft and all in it. So I know exactly how "the guy on the step" felt and what his motivations were, having nearly experienced the same thing he did as I noted in my previous post in this thread. To that end, if I was in that helicopter I would have done whatever I could have to control that loose canopy.
With the benefit of perfect hindsight and the ability to study the video multiple times in detail, if I was "that guy" I would a) definitely had jumper #1 cut away in exactly the same fashion, b) gather in what I could, c) wish I had the presence of mind to get one of the other jumpers on the load to ask the pilot to slow down to the extent practical and d) perhaps settle for merely controlling the mess as opposed to completely pulling it into the cabin (I can tell you my heart was in my throat the couple of times that pilot chute inflated as he disentangled it).
As a budding helicopter pilot I can say that I'd make the trade-off of coming to a hover (if possible) in order to facilitate retrieving the canopy vs. maintaining sufficient forward speed to deal with a possible catastrophic LTE, particularly because the risk of such a catastrophe would be greatly lessened by coming into a hover and allowing the skydivers in the ship to more easily solve the problem. Perhaps that is more reflective of my static line jumpmaster experience (argh, I just carbon dated myself
) as I'm used to working on a step and hauling static line deployment bags back into aircraft than it is of my nascent helicopter experience, but nevertheless I stand by it.
I showed my wife, also a skydiver, the video and, after she exclaimed
her immediate response was to cheer on the guy on the step and make the appropriate scary noises every time the pilot chute almost got loose. If the ship didn't have so much forward speed that pilot chute would not been nearly as exciting.