How do the Civy para schools deal with a hang up?
I have the dubious honour of about 2500 take-offs in a Skyvan, significantly less landings and a dispatch list of approximately 4000 static line students.
The (long) answer to your question is that in the Skyvan we operated for sports parachuting there were two dispatchers - primary and secondary. The load was between 12 and 16 students with 2 exits per pass. As the run in commenced, the primary stood the two students up, checked their static line, main and reserve and passed the first student to the secondary who placed their hand on the top of the tailgate frame with the students head looking in to the aircraft. On the command 'Go' from the secondary, the student performed a 180 degree turn and exited in the sports parachutist position. The primary then retrieved the bags. In the event of a hang-up, the trained procedure was that the student was supposed to look up, realise what had happened and place their hands behind their head - ie away from the reserve handle. Having been shown the knife that was to cut their static line, they would nod and as they fell away, would deploy their reserve. No, we didn't believe that would work either. So, the alternative was that secondary was to 'Slide down the static line into a position behind the student with the supplied knife, locate the students reserve handle, cut the line, deploy the reserve and then deploy his own canopy'. Fortunately, there is no record of either of those highly unlikely scenarios having to be carried out although we came close to disaster a couple of times -but not with hang-ups.