Investigators release video of skydiver cutting parachute free after becoming caught on plane wing

[GTX]

Video shows moment skydiver cuts himself free from tangled parachute

Australia's transport safety investigator has released video footage of a skydiver cutting himself free from his parachute after it became snagged on a plane wing in mid-air.

www.abc.net.au

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

I ain't jumping out of an airplane without a damned good reason.

 

[rob23]

Video shows moment skydiver cuts himself free from tangled parachute

Australia's transport safety investigator has released video footage of a skydiver cutting himself free from his parachute after it became snagged on a plane wing in mid-air.

www.abc.net.au

Okay, I was a skydiver for 12 years, the entire decade of the 80's and a couple more. I got a USPA (united states parachute association) 'D' (expert) license along the way. In this video, the guy is a Front Floater. The jumper in the door facing the airplane is the middle floater, the guy outside the skin aft is the rear floater. Somehow the front floaters reserve parachute ripcord got pulled. I figure someone trying to get grips on the door seal for leverage when exiting. Since it was his reserve, he cannot use anything but his Zack knife to separate himself from the canopy. The main canopy has a single point cutaway system, called a three ring, that will separate a malfunctioning main from the container. This is to prevent the reserve canopy from getting tangled up with the main canopy flopping around over his head. In the this case, he has to lose the reserve canopy to prevent an entanglement and the only way is to cut the lines from the risers. A pretty damn expensive incident. truth be told. Once he cuts the lines, which are probably kevlar, he gets stable and pulls his pilot chute and opens his main canopy and what's left of the reserve gets in the way so he has a bad landing. Typically under a square the landings are easy tippy toe. If I can confuse anyone more. please let me know.

 

[GTX]

I ain't jumping out of an airplane without a damned good reason.

I have jumped in the past and loved doing it. The first time was wild though.

 

[GTX]

A pretty damn expensive incident. truth be told.

Considering the alternative, I think the price was inconsequential

 

[GTX]

Somehow the front floaters reserve parachute ripcord got pulled. I figure someone trying to get grips on the door seal for leverage when exiting.

The report is that the handle of his reserve parachute snagged on a wing flap.

 

[Airframes]

Canopy was already deploying before he fully exited the door, and nowhere near the tail-plane or any form of "wing flap" (darned journalists !).
Either the handle was caught on a protrusion on the door frame (unlikely, as there shouldn't be any or, if there was, it would be taped over to prevent such an occurrence), or accidentally caught-up in the other jumper's hand or harness, as suggested by rob23.

 

[GTX]

Canopy was already deploying before he fully exited the door, and nowhere near the tail-plane or any form of "wing flap" (darned journalists !).

Err...that comment was not from the journalist but from the actual Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) investigation - see below:

https://www.atsb.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-12/AO-2025-057%20Final.pdf

Also, if you watch the video in slow motion it does not appear to have been deployed before he exited the door.

 

[SaparotRob]

I'll stick with business class.

 

[Airframes]

Ah, sorry !
I saw the video on BBC News, where the same phrase was used. Pretty bloody poor for an "official" of the ATSB to use such a description then !

 

[rob23]

Err...that comment was not from the journalist but from the actual Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) investigation - see below:

https://www.atsb.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-12/AO-2025-057%20Final.pdf

Also, if you watch the video in slow motion it does not appear to have been deployed before he exited the door.

Dedicated jump aircraft, as Airframes stated, don't have anything to snag a skydivers gear. In fact, some DC-3 and Beech 18's often have extra grab handles riveted fore and aft of the door for the floaters to have something to hang onto. These handles are mounted around the top of the door frame for hands to grab, not gear. I'll stick with another jumper accidently pulling the ripcord.

 

[Thumpalumpacus]

I have jumped in the past and loved doing it. The first time was wild though.

I've got respect for you -- and my son. His mother and I bought him a jump for his 18th birthday. I just ain't doing it myself.

 

[rob23]

Considering the alternative, I think the price was inconsequential

Kids, don't try this at home- We had several weekends with just crappy weather. On one of those weekends one of our 1000+ jumps people stated that our parachutes were designed to open fast and at high speeds, all true. He and a area safety guy got to talking, and decided that if the parachutes were packed for a fast opening, as in a BASE jump, and we exited at a speed of 140mph, a successful jump from 900' could be made. Ron, the 1000+ jumps guy, me and one other idiot decided to give it a go.

We removed our sliders, which help mediate how fast the parachute opens so the canopies would open faster. We did not fold or roll the nose of the parachute either, again to facilitate a faster opening. We get in the Cessna 182 and take off. Below the cloud base at 900' visibility was something like 10 miles so technically we were good. Ron would go first, and me and Graham would carefully watch what he did, and if Ron frapped we would stay in the airplane and land with it.

Jump run took minutes instead of the usual 30-45 minutes getting to 8000' which was a little disorienting I looked down and decided 900 was not very high as far as it goes. I asked Benny, our pilot, if we could get another inch or two and he said we were out of our minds. I could not disagree. On jump run the door is opened and a cat 5 hurricane enters the airplane. A Baby Ruth wrapper blew past my face and out the door. Ron crawled out, hung on to the strut with both hands, left foot on the step, then his right hand quickly grabs his pilot chute, he yells "Rock and Roll!!!" and leaps off in a hard arch letting go of the pilot chute. We see his container pop open, the D bag tumbles out, the lines come off and there's a fully deployed canopy. He lands. He was in the air maybe five seconds. My turn!!

I crawled out just like Ron did, hung on to the strut just like Ron did, and pulled my pilot chute out just like Ron did. I did not yell Rock and Roll, I just leaped off and hit a hard arch and let go of my pilot chute, I thought just like Ron did, and felt my pilot chute wrap around my right foot. Well. this was bad. Very bad. I yelled a naughty word and everyone watching us heard it. Then my brain, full of adrenaline went into fifth gear. Suddenly I could see individual blades of grass with wet mud between them, like my eyes went Steve Austin bionic. I also saw the Atlanta Journal newspaper with the headline SKYDIVER DIES, I also knew no way my main would open in time. People on the ground were turning their backs so as not to see me frap. So brain went back to training days and decided to do a canopy trade, pull the reserve ripcord and cutaway the main half a second later to hopefully avoid an entanglement. Literally a second before impact I got a canopy over my head and landed safely a few feet away from a taxiway. All of that took in reality around three seconds. Graham decided to throw in the towel and landed with the airplane.

I stood up, daisy chained my reserves lines, picked up my partially deployed main, and walked back to the hanger. Me and the area safety guy who was also my rigger shook hands and I gave him my rig to repack my reserve and reattach my main to the container. My overriding thought was no more jumping until he gets my rig sorted out, and it's gonna bust my budget for a month as I would be buying his choice of booze as a thank you. Nearly dying, it just didn't figure into the calculus. In a way every jump was near death experience. So was driving to and from the dropzone. This was in 1987, and two years earlier we had lost 20 fellow skydivers in three different airplane crashes. Dying was in the back of the mind, at least in my case it was there, I was aware it could happen, but I never let it stop me. I had to 'retire' for financial reasons, not from too many close calls. I/We wuz nuts back then. Our credo was EFS, Eat F*ck Skydive. We even had t-shirts emblazoned with EFS. I don't know how to end this so I'll just stop typing now.

 

[Airframes]

Nice one. Brings back memories of military jumping in the 1970s, and then skydiving later, in the mid 1980s and early 90s.
Wish I was fit enough to still do it, but disability won't allow !

 

[rob23]

Nice one. Brings back memories of military jumping in the 1970s, and then skydiving later, in the mid 1980s and early 90s.
Wish I was fit enough to still do it, but disability won't allow !

I was turned away from the military due to too many health issues. For some reason, bleeding disorders, dietary restrictions and two lazy eyes are incompatible with the military. I was told I'd never make it as a paratrooper because of my eyes, so I made 633 skydives to prove them 'right'.

Even if I could afford a new rig and all that, I'm way too bunged up now. It's so unusual for someone over forty to be active, there is a special patch for such people called the POPs award, Parachutists Over Phorty.

I absolutely love to track, or go into the 'Delta', heading downhill at 200+mph before flaring, getting stable and then waving off and opening. I loved flying my parachute too. Being a nonrigid wing, we flew them around, spiraled, stalled, and landed up wind like any other aircraft. We always had accuracy contests, leave the airplane at 13,500, do our RW, or relative work, building formations and such, then opening, looking for the bandanna on the ground and landing in the center of it as if stepping off a curb. Oh well, time marches on and spares none.

 

[Airframes]

I got my POPs patch a couple of years before leaving the display team I used to manage, due to (young) family commitments. Last time I was under canopy was when I skied off a mountain side in the French alps, thirty years ago - great fun, but no freefall "rush".
Nowadays, I'd more than qualify for a POS patch - Parachutist over Seventy !
I'd thought of doing a tandem jump, but how do you get a two-seat bicycle into an Islander or Twin Otter ....................

 

[Wildcat]

You guys are nuts. I got my para wings in the Army, did my 7 static line jumps from a herc at 1000ft, including a night jump and hated every one of them! Thankfully, being para-qualified was not a requirement of my job; I was simply on the course for shits and giggles. The para battalion was deployed to Afghanistan or Timor, so there were empty spots on the course and being young and dumb, thought it would be a good idea.

 

[special ed]

Somewhere in my slide collection, I have shots of Jim Houston making his 999th jump from a BT-13, Harlingen Texas. His goal was to jump from as many different planes as possible. He had just received FAA approval for the first civilian sky diver jump from the B-29 and wanted to make it his 1000th jump. The next day he successfully exited FIFI from the nose wheel well with the gear down. My fellow airplane nut got the pic of him from inside FIFI at exit.

 

[Sluff]

Yeah, that was way up on the pucker factor but this is off the scale..........https://gallagherstory.com/ejection_seat/

 

[rob23]

Four of us formed a team for competitions. We could never afford to make more than five jumps on the weekends so we never really got very good. We called ourselves the 'Multiple Injuries', a morbid bit of humor. In Parachutist magazine, there was an Incident Reports page and if there was a death more often than not the reason was 'multiple injuries upon impact'.

We got to make a demo jump at the little municipal airport in Kennesaw, GA. We had a time to take off at 2pm. The organizers were clear that the timeline was very important in order to get all the demonstrations in the air. So three of us, myself, Graham, Keith were waiting on Jeff. Jeff was late, and this being years before cell phones we had no idea where he was. We got into our jump attire, got our rigs on and were doing pin checks on each other (a check of the pins that hold the main and reserve parachute in the container, or backpack ) and Jeff finally made it. Naturally, he wasn't packed so to save time he 'trash packed' his main. Basically his lines and the cells of his parachute were not flaked but straightened out and stuffed into the deployment bag. At 10 past 2pm, we were in the air going up to 6000'.

We all had the butterflies, as this was a first demonstration jump for all of us. We decided to launch a four way, where we already had grips on each other as we exited the airplane. We successfully launched and held our formation until 3,500, did the shake and break, did a 180 and tracked away from each other, and right at 2500' we all opened. As I was releasing my brakes I saw a reserve parachute. It was Jeff. Jeff's reserve was a 26' flat four line release. On the risers were four red lines that were to be pulled off the riser, held onto, and used to steer with. Jeff failed to grab his so they were now too far above his head to grab. He now had to do riser pulls to sorta steer, and his parachute seemed to be tractor beamed to a pond in the middle of a pasture. Jeff's reserve was turning left, right, left, right, and not moving away from the pond at all. Then a big splash, he had landed.

Graham turned to land next to the pond, Keith and I pressed on to the airport to show how it was possible to land on a target and not crash into the ground like paratroopers under T-10's or whatever it is they jump now. We did good, and waving at the crowd quickly went to the vehicles. We were just about to leave to find that pond Jeff landed in when a pickup truck pulled up with Jeff and Graham in the back. Turns out there was a guy fishing and rowed out and pulled Jeff's drowned body out, saving his life.

Graham told us what Jeff's rescuer said happened: After hitting the water, the fisherman was stunned and just stared as Jeff's head popped up and he yelled "DROWNING" and disappeared. 'Glub glub glub glub' then his head popped up again and he yelled "NOT KIDDING" then went back under for the last time. The fisherman recovered from the shock at seeing someone appear out of nowhere and land in the little pond. He rowed out, grabbed Jeff's limp body and pulled him into the boat. rig and all. By that time Graham had landed, ditched his gear and waited for the boat to come back. Then he and the fisherman did compressions and pushed on Jeff's abdomen, Jeff's eyes popped open and he started puking water "like a fire hydrant". He recovered just fine.

From that time on, when climbing to altitude, whenever any of us saw a lake, a stream, a river or even a big mud puddle we'd make sure Jeff knew about it. "Hey Jeff" someone would yell, we had to yell in order to be heard over the ambient noise. "there's a stream over here". Jeff would curse at whoever said it. Jocularity, jocularity.....

I got my POPs patch a couple of years before leaving the display team I used to manage, due to (young) family commitments. Last time I was under canopy was when I skied off a mountain side in the French alps, thirty years ago - great fun, but no freefall "rush".
Nowadays, I'd more than qualify for a POS patch - Parachutist over Seventy !
I'd thought of doing a tandem jump, but how do you get a two-seat bicycle into an Islander or Twin Otter ....................

Congrats on the POPs! That is awesome. Did you get the SCR and SCS? Those were cool patches. And Jame Bonding off a mountain, that's crazy- something I'd love to have done, even though I never cottoned to BASE jumping, that scared me. Give me 13500 over a bridge or building anyday.

I remember when Bill Booth was at a boogie at Z-Hills, don't remember which one, maybe Memorial Day boogie? He had that long-ass beard and birkenstocks trying to find someone to be a tandem passenger. He finally found someone willing to go with him. Ain't no way I'm ever doing a tandem, unless as you said, a tandem bike, maybe out of a Skyvan. That was a fun airplane to jump. Hot air balloons will give you that freefall rush. I made two, and those were wild, at 8000 you can hear cows moo, car tires swish on a road, and a screen door bang shut. Letting go of the basket, it is so quiet and as you gain speed it gets noisier and noisier and you go from feet first to belly first. On the first jump, we landed on a golf course, and golfers are mean. The second we landed in a pasteur where cows were grazing. When we came out of 'no where' and landed they went nuts and stampeded. If we thought golfers were mean, a pissed off rancher with a 30.06 is even meaner. We begged for mercy, and he said "next time...." and shook the rifle. That was scary.