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Sad business. Tragic.
However, as one who first jumped back in the 70's, at Sibson, I cannot appreciate how folk call a tandem jump as 'their' parachute jump. It is nothing of the sort. The responsibilities lie purely with the parachute instructor and the aircraft pilot. The person strapped to the parachutist is like a package carried by Fedex. Same as today's wing-walking really. However, I guess it makes money and satisfies would be thrill-seekers. Apologies for sounding grumpy. |
Originally Posted by MissChief
(Post 11909401)
Sad business. Tragic.
However, as one who first jumped back in the 70's, at Sibson, I cannot appreciate how folk call a tandem jump as 'their' parachute jump. It is nothing of the sort. The responsibilities lie purely with the parachute instructor and the aircraft pilot. The person strapped to the parachutist is like a package carried by Fedex. Same as today's wing-walking really. However, I guess it makes money and satisfies would be thrill-seekers. Apologies for sounding grumpy. Our local field does solo jumps, my friends all went and did it when we were about 18 years old. My friend's mother came to watch, decided it looked fun, and went herself. She managed to collapse her chute and broke her leg. At the nearby hospital they said "Another one from the drop zone". Maybe tandem IS better if you just want to say you jumped out of an airplane. |
My 'old school' orthopædic surgeon* was quite acid about parachute jumps for charity. His view was that they probably cost the NHS more money than they raised.
*Not quite Sir Lancelot Spratt, but probably went to medical school with him. My need for his services had nothing to do with parachuting. |
Not quite true...
Originally Posted by MissChief
(Post 11909401)
Sad business. Tragic.
However, as one who first jumped back in the 70's, at Sibson, I cannot appreciate how folk call a tandem jump as 'their' parachute jump. It is nothing of the sort. The responsibilities lie purely with the parachute instructor and the aircraft pilot. The person strapped to the parachutist is like a package carried by Fedex. Same as today's wing-walking really. However, I guess it makes money and satisfies would be thrill-seekers. Apologies for sounding grumpy. |
Not true...
Originally Posted by andy148
(Post 11908704)
We need to wait until the investigation by BS is completed before we consider jumping to conclusions.
A few things to think about for those not knowledgeable in skydiving. 1: Skydiving is inherently safe. Tandem containers are over-engineered and are inspected during the reserve repack for airworthiness. And no DZ in the UK will let a tandem container back into circulation that is not airworthy. The harnesses that the students wear are also inspected regularly. 2: No parachute (canopy) is guaranteed to open. That's why we have a reserve. The forces acting on an opening canopy are pretty wild. The individual or pair can affect how the canopy reacts when it opens. Not being symmetrical in the harness can cause the canopy to open in a turn. This shouldn't be an issue with a tandem canopy or a student copy, as they are loaded at a low wing loading and are very docile. 3: A tandem instructor must be thoroughly familiar with various emergency and non-emergency drills when addressing nuisance factors and malfunctions. If you get these wrong, the results can be fatal. Tandem instructors reduce mischaracterisation of malfunctions by practising their drills in front of another tandem instructor at regular intervals and then being signed off as current. 4: AADs do not 'open' the reserve parachute. When they activate, a propellant charge initiates the cutting of the reserve closing loop, which keeps the reserve securely in the container. Without going down a rabbit hole! The malfunctioning main canopy acts as a large pilot chute, serving as an anchor in the sky that pulls out the reserve bag as the parachutist falls away. The reserve then inflates normally (or not). You can manually activate the reserve by pulling on the reserve handle on the left side of the container. This handle is attached to a metal or fabric cord that ends with a metal pin. The metal pin passes through the reserve closing loop, keeping the reserve in the container. Upon pulling the reserve handle, the pin is extracted from the closing loop, and a large metal spring, contained within a smaller parachute, fires off the parachutist's back and acts as an anchor, much like the malfunctioning main parachute mentioned earlier. 5: Dunkerswell is quite within its rights to open again. While some might find this unpalatable, accidents happen. It's a commercial operation. As long as all the required investigative paperwork is completed, witness statements taken, and they have the ok from the police and British Skydiving. Then they are free to operate. I don't have first-hand knowledge of what happened, but following previous deaths in the UK that I was privy to and around. I know that British Skydiving has a very thorough process. And Dunkerswell will have internal checks that they will perform before allowing any revenue jumping to commence. 6: Tandem deaths, as tragic as they are. Do increase the number of people doing tandems, as this was mentioned to me by a DZO in the aftermath of a fatality. 7: We sign a lot of waivers before we are allowed to jump. In the US, it's way worse; you sign your life away. However, the dangers of skydiving are downplayed during the tandem brief. They are not hidden in any way. Tandem students know exactly what they are getting into. In my opinion, previous comments suggesting that students are unaware of the dangers associated with the sport are incorrect. Condolences to all at Dunkerswell, to the TI, the tandem student, and their families. BSBD. However the kit is designed, assembled and jumped by fallible humans, so I don't think it can be called 'inherently safe'. 2) 'No parachute (canopy) is guaranteed to open' ... kinda makes my point. 4) 'AADs (Automatic Activation Devices) do not 'open' the reserve parachute'? We could quibble over semantics but the result of an AAD is firing the reserve pilot chute, same as if the ripcord had been pulled. It's hard to make sense of the rest of 4) ... 7) Just reinforces that skydiving isn't 'inherently safe'. I don't have the data (tandem fatality stats aren't readily available as ordinary sport jumper fatality stats are) to prove it, but judging by news reports, 25 years ago tandem fatalities were very, very rare. These days, globally, there seems to be 1-5 tandem pair fatalities each year in the news, whereas in the past there might be 1 pair every 5 years. Of course, some of that is just because there are many more tandem jumps today than there used to be. But one of the entry requirements for candidate TIs was downgraded a few years ago, from a minimum of 1000 to just 500 jumps - that may also be a contributing factor. BSBD |
750 jumps for TI in the UK - can be significantly lower elsewhere.
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Any parachute jump could be described as similar to carrying out a full brakes rebuild on a vehicle then driving at 120mph towards an immovable object, having not tested them.
Difference is, on a parachute jump, you can’t swerve to avoid the ground. :} |
Originally Posted by ShyTorque
(Post 11911184)
Any parachute jump could be described as similar to carrying out a full brakes rebuild on a vehicle then driving at 120mph towards an immovable object, having not tested them.
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Skydive Buzz website has been taken down for ‘maintenance’ - make of that what you will.
if you know, you know. https://www.skydiveukltd.com |
Skydive Buzz
Skydive Buzz has just announced its closure. It says its due to financial reasons, but this accident can't have helped. Commiserations to those who have lost their jobs.
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The skydiving aircraft used, G-SVAN Cessna 208, has been active multiple times from Dunkeswell since the fatal accident, most recently on Wednesday this week.
The director of Skydive Buzz Ltd has other directorships, apparently skydive related, including Flyhigh.Buzz Ltd., registered at Dunkeswell. |
"This week, a fresh company Skydive South West, created by staff who had worked there and been made redundant, has announced they will resume operations."
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/cars/news/...861bc079&ei=43 |
Failed deployment
They were using a new type of band to secure the lines. The packer (not known) put the lines too deep into the bands (at least 3" they say, normal is 1"/1.5", two fingers) and the lines bunched up and fouled and didn't release from the D Bag causing a chute bag fail. Only a bit of the chute came out. For whatever reason the instructor failed to cut away the failed main chute and deployed the reserve which opened into the failed main and fouled. From then on it was fate. Tragic and could have been prevented. There is an advisory out from the BPA 2/2025 on the bands, that can be found online.
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Found the advisory:
https://britishskydiving.org/wp-cont...nds-in-use.pdf Tragic, found myself wondering if it applies to the parachutes used by glider pilots. |
Originally Posted by CaptainSAC
(Post 11944640)
They were using a new type of band to secure the lines. The packer (not known) put the lines too deep into the bands (at least 3" they say, normal is 1"/1.5", two fingers) and the lines bunched up and fouled and didn't release from the D Bag causing a chute bag fail. Only a bit of the chute came out. For whatever reason the instructor failed to cut away the failed main chute and deployed the reserve which opened into the failed main and fouled. From then on it was fate. Tragic and could have been prevented. There is an advisory out from the BPA 2/2025 on the bands, that can be found online.
If the lines bunched and fouled then the bag wouldn’t open and none of the chute would come out. But you say ‘a bit of the chute came out’ ? |
Originally Posted by cats_five
(Post 11944657)
Found the advisory:
https://britishskydiving.org/wp-cont...nds-in-use.pdf Tragic, found myself wondering if it applies to the parachutes used by glider pilots. Line stows on the diapers of round parachutes are generally not double stowed, and the instructions are usually for quite small bights through the elastic, and there are no cascades in the lines to create areas of sudden bulk (since round canopies use continuous lines that don't split). General rubber band stowage instructions from the bulletin could apply though. BUT: The big issue is that elastics need to be changed more often these days. A few years ago the main supplier to the skydiving world went out of business. The new supplier uses a different curing technique, that (without going into details) means the elastics don't maintain their strength as long. So it the old days, if a pilot rig was sitting around for 5 years, at the next repack the rigger might well find that all of the elastics were actually still perfectly fine, and didn't need replacement yet. As long as the rig hadn't been sitting in the sun all summer in a hot cockpit, in which case the elastics (not to mention the harness!) would have degraded a bunch. Nowadays after a couple years the rigger might find elastics starting to break easily. So pilot rigs need closer attention during pack jobs, and often involve some extra time to replace elastics, both if they are showing weakness and to make sure they stay good during the whole upcoming time while packed. Elastics really have to be watched carefully and replaced more often, so the rigger has to pay extra attention & do more work! (Elastic bands are generally not used for skydiving ram-air reserve parachutes, so the issue of poor elastics applies mostly to our main parachutes.) There are starting to be SOME improvements in the rubber band situation, as one or two suppliers are starting to make better quality elastics for parachutes again, with tweaked processes to last longer, at higher cost. But in general there's a whole mix of crappier-than-before elastics out there in the wild. Peter skydiver, parachute rigger (in Canada, don't know UK specific rules) |
Bag log contributory factor, not the cause; the reserve getting caught up with the main was the problem here. I understand the type of container in use (Sigma?) has a known history of the risers not always clearing cleanly on a cut-away and that is a scenario being looked into.
Partial Malfunction (deployment process initiated • canopy does not fully or properly deploy) Look-grab cutaway handle • Look-grab reserve handle • Arch • Peel/pull cutaway handle • Ensure separation of main risers (physically assisting if necessary) • Peel/pull reserve handle • Check for deployment • Check altimeter |
Hello from Mississauga Canada. In 1967 I took a glider flying ground school put on by the Boy Scouts leading to a summer flying course .During the ground school one of the guest instructors turned out to be the youngest brother of the irving company.He was 91 and gave a great lecture , I had brought one of the glider club parachutes and he had me put it on., He then told me to pull the rip cord and I protested saying the chute was still being used at the club but he told me that he could repack but he would not have to as I would never get the chute open with the rip cord and from the moment he spotted the WW2 surplus chute with no repack tag .So he told me to pull and I pulled and pulled the rip cord was jammed!! He then showed us the back of the chute opened a flap and showed us the four pins that fit through the grommets to hold the pack tight. All the pins were bent into a half-moon shape and the pins hah been badly bent by years of use with no repacts done yearly.He showed how to prime the pins by pushing the pins part way before a flight. He also pulled a red tag out of his breafcase informed me they called this model chute the B4 As in before they knew how to make a chute!! He also lockwired the red tag onto the chute.He had a chute that looked brand new but when he opened the chute the canopy was completely melted! No SMOKEING on the flight deck! He gave me a pin and a patch from the IRVING PARACHUTE COMPANY and is the center piece of my airline pin board THATS ALL FOLKES
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Tube stows on the bag are also a contributing factor to bag locks. When I used to jump, I always used regular elastics that would break if needed. True, you had to change them more often, but still.
mo |
Oh no, another death in the space of 12 months.
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Just one of those horrible, horrible coincidences - this was a *very* experienced solo jumper in a Wingsuit.
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Originally Posted by scard08
(Post 12080758)
That is from July 2025 and doesn't really say anything except that the coroner confirmed the names that were already public knowledge, and nobody is going to say anything until the AAIB report is out.
What it does say is that a law firm is following the investigation, which is something that observers might not be aware of. |
Not a surprise that the families might be considering legal action. We've not been having a good time recently :sad:
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