Luckily it ended well.

 

[media=]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vleQ1bh-YAM&feature=related[/media]

 

Marco

Yup, very lucky, especially for the guy who runs that parahute centre, as it has come under quite a lot of criticism for the high number of fatalities it experiences - ten deaths since 1985 apparently and more than one FAA investigation too, at least according to what I've read.

 

Most people who indulge in extreme sports accept that there is some risk involved, I myself do gliding, and that does have some risks which I accept, and I've known four people who have died when doing that and a fifth who had to bail out of his aircraft after a control linkage broke. Some of that can be down to bad luck which can take statistics up somewhat, but ten fatalities for that center (if that figure is indeed correct, and it seems so), against the number of jumps it does per year, is a very high mortality rate indeed, and would set alarm bells ringing with me if I were to choose a place to indulge in such things.

 

Three things struck me on that video, one, the harness on the woman looked rather loose to me when she was in the aircraft, two, she was clearly refusing at the door, which is something that can also loosen fastenings if someone is struggling, and three, the exit method was not ideal either. All of those things made it look at bit sloppy. It is fair to say that many people get nervous just before their first jump, so some reticence at the door is to be expected, but one thing which can alleviate that with tandem jumps, is to make a reverse exit from the aircraft instead of having the novice jumper going at the front, where they will be staring out of an open doorway at the ground several thousand feet below with the engine roaring away and the slipstream blasting them, none of which does much to calm someone down. Going out backwards also prevents the possibility of someone wedging themselves in the doorway in a panic, which is what you see occurring on that video. Panic and the problems it can cause is in fact largely why tandem jumps were developed.

 

I don't blame the woman at all, I was damn near frozen in fear when I made my one and only parachute jump (not a tandem jump either, but one from a static line, and the instructor actually shoved his foot in my back to get me to go LOL); she was in the hands of supposedly experienced professionals who are the ones who should think about all the aforementioned stuff in order to reduce the chances of problems occurring, which are certainly a possibility when people get scared.

 

I'm glad she managed to make it okay, and she is clearly a very gutsy old girl to give it a go, and all credit to the main 'chute guy for doing his best to save a situation gone bad, but even so, the video does not give me an impression of confidence in the competency of that operation at all, and it looks like the statistics bear that out too.

 

Al

I wonder if this was just staged, and that she is really a pro. The reason I think this, is if this was real, who would put music like that in a video to a near tragedy? Kind of inappropriate!

Then again, why would you release a video of one of your jumps going wrong when you are supposed to run a professional skydiving school? It would hardly be a good idea for a staged promotional video.

 

Al

Is it from the skydiving school or just a video they created for the customer of the experience, similar to the one I got when I flew the Mustang? It doesn't make sense that the skydiving school would release it themselves in either case. Why would they want to publicize a real incident? That's not good PR either. That channel also has other skydiving incidents on it as well. Something smells fishy here!!

Wow... Poor lady! She seemed happy though, and that is what matters.

This video is private?

This video is private?

See it here (and possibly on other news websites)...

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2012/may/27/skydiving-octogenarian-slides-harness-video