This past weekend at Spaceland we had a 40-way attempt. (They may have ended up with only 36....whatever.) It's truly an awesome sight to see and hear 40 canopies opening at nearly the same time and then to see those same 40 canopies all land in the same landing area! Talk about traffic!
Anyway, on one of the loads the winds died completely and AT LEAST 5 of the 40 jumpers failed to stand up their landings (that's over 10%!). It appeared to me that the main biff-contributor was a failure to finish the flare completely (followed shortly thereafter by an inability to run out the landing). The jumper with the least amount of experience on the load had over 400 jumps and I would guess that the average number of jumps per jumper was somewhere over 1000.
Now certainly the fact that they're landing with about 39 other canopies has to be distracting (to say the least) so it's understandable that not every landing was picture perfect. I'm not, by any means, trying to rip on these guys' canopy skills. Rather, it struck me that, regardless of how much experience we may have, we can always improve on even the most basic aspects of canopy flight. (I'm pretty sure some would argue that the flare is anything but 'basic' but you get my point.)
I believe I had around 200 jumps when it dawned on me (probably with a thud as I failed to stand up a landing ) that I wasn't consistently finishing my flare completely. Now on each landing I try and focus on (among other things) squeezing each and every last bit of lift out of the canopy.
Anyway, for what it's worth, that's my interesting observation from the weekend. Thanks for listening.
I won't make any further observations as not to draw flames from the fairer sex....
I have noticed the same trend to which you're referring however, of the 5 folks I saw biff in, only 2 were chics...and the person with the ugliest biff (on that load) was a guy...
I watch people of all experience levels with bad landing technique. It seems that a lot of people just stop learning canopy control at a certain point. They are very concerned with there perfomance in freefall but as long as they make it to the ground ok, they are satisfied with their canopy skills. Even if you aren't interested in any canopy disciplines like accuracy or swooping you should always strive to perfect your landing technique.
Interesting...your observations will inspire newbees. Point to ponder: 20 jumps or 2000 jumps, we all need to review canopy skills now and then. Landings under a perfectly good canopy is the #1 killer.
Skydiving is not a static excercise with discrete predictability...
FYI... I am currently working on a thesis in Organizational Leadership dealing with the feasibility/effectiveness of a canopy continuing education program implemented by USPA. USPA has thus far been very helpful, and hopefully someday something like this can be done by someone. I had to use USPA because the project has to deal with an "organization", and I am thinking about things like adding formal canopy courses to the B, C, and D license req.'s (kind of like water training). Anyway, wish me luck and give suggestions, I will gladly use them if I can work them into the weird parameters of this stinking thesis. I'll probably be posting some unscientific polls in the near future, so please help me out!!!
) that I wasn't consistently finishing my flare completely. Now on each landing I try and focus on (among other things) squeezing each and every last bit of lift out of the canopy. 
