Re: [The111] Fatality - Texas (Spaceland) - 12 March 2008

[FreakyFlyer 0]

I am new to this forum and will confess I haven’t even made my first jump. I am someone who likes to research everything before I “jump” into anything. I am honestly deeply disturbed by some of the statements which have been made on this board, and can’t figure out how these policies or perspectives could be the norm…

I’ve noticed many posts blaming the student for some combination of panicking, for reacting to adrenaline, spinning &/or not properly arching. I would think any combination of these reactions could be a very natural and somewhat common reaction for someone with little skydiving experience. Is there really nothing that can be done for a student if this happens?

Someone apparently affiliated with Spaceland said “he was jumping with an instructor and they hold onto you and instruct you, but you’re on your own for the canopy deployment”. Yet I’ve also read that not pulling is a fairly common problem for new jumpers. One instructor on this list made a comment to someone that “you were not the best of students because your JM had to come save you more than once”, which makes me think this isn’t all that uncommon. Is a student really on there own out there?

Then there is the question of whether the pack fit correctly, several posts have addressed that other people have had problems pulling these chutes. While you can say it’s the student’s responsibility to make sure their pack fits correctly, isn’t that kind of like a theme park blaming a patron for not verifying the rollercoaster track was complete? We place our lives in the hands of professionals, and assume they have the ability to see hazards we might never catch.

I guess all in all, what I’ve been reading has just shaken my faith in the sport, a sport I thought was incredibly safe. I am disturbed by a mentality which seems to care more about the sport than the people involved in it. I am not saying this is true of all instructors and jumpers, I have seen some on this site which seem very thoughtful and safety conscious, but it seems the majority are offended by the questions even being raised. That scares me. Isn’t this the place for such discussions?

[Beachbum 0]

This section of the thread might get moved to Safety and Training .... and I am only going to address the first portion of your post .... long answer first ...

I don't think anyone is blaming the student, as much as speculating what the student may have or not have done. Yes, panic, spins, not pulling at the correct altitude (or at all), etc. are things that happen fairly often with students, but those (particularly panic) are more often than not on the first couple of jumps, not as frequent on the succeeding level student jumps such as this was. The normal progression of a student does begin with someone holding on to them. In a typical AFF progression, for instance, it is routine for the first 3 jumps to be made with 2 jumpmasters in the air with you, and the next 4 with 1 jm. IF you show good stability, altitude awareness, etc. ... then you are passed on to the next jump level in your training progression ... if not, then you should be repeating whatever particular jump gave you problems until you are able to complete it correctly. Holding on ... the jumpmasters who work with a given student decide when to release their hold on each student, since some require longer to demonstrate an ability to get and stay stable. By the time a student reaches the level of jump in question here, the student should typically be able to stay pretty stable, and to regain stability if it is lost. Although, as has been noted, a jm needs to always be ready for the unexpected, a jumpmaster on this type of jump is likely expecting to be there more to evaluate/observe the student so he/she can give good insight, feedback, and instruction to them after the jump, than they are to hold the student and keep them stable (that should hopefully not be necessary at this level).

So ... the short answer is no ... the student is not out there entirely on their own, but yes, they are expected to perform at or at least near evaluated levels established on prior jumps in their training progression. You are not alone, but responsibility falls squarely on you at each step to learn and perform as taught, and carry those skills through to the next level student jump.

As for not pulling .... I am not familiar with Spaceland's program, but I have met some of their AFFIs, and last year met one introduced to me as their head instructor ... all seem quite competent to me. Any program I've been around enough to see some of the method, pull priorities are stressed in each step of a student's initial training phases, right up to the time they get off student status, and wayyyyyyy beyond that if a person demonstrates a need for a reminder. I very much doubt that Spaceland omits this.

Safety of the sport? Overall, for the right people ... it's actually pretty safe all things considered. But that said, if a person is the type who tends to initially throw their hands in the air and freak out to any extent when faced with an emergency situation, I would not recomm end that they take it up as a sport. Some people go thousands of jumps without needing to utilize their emergency procedures, and some people need them on their very first jump!! I don't know stats on it, but my take would be that if you stick with it, you ARE likely to be faced with using your EPs at some point, and when it happens, depending on the type of problem and altitude at which it occurs, you may literally have a very few seconds to make the right decision and act to save your life. Certainly something to think about for a prospective student!!

As long as you are happy with yourself ... who cares what the rest of the world thinks?

[labrys 0]

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I guess all in all, what I’ve been reading has just shaken my faith in the sport, a sport I thought was incredibly safe. I am disturbed by a mentality which seems to care more about the sport than the people involved in it. I am not saying this is true of all instructors and jumpers, I have seen some on this site which seem very thoughtful and safety conscious, but it seems the majority are offended by the questions even being raised. That scares me. Isn’t this the place for such discussions?

No, this isn't really the best place for such discussions. The people who post here are a small subset of the skydiving community who enjoy participating in Internet forums. Some of the people who post here are exactly what they appear to be or present themselves to be.

Some of the people who post here misrepresent themselves. The best place for someone who has no experience and no knowledge base with which to help them try to determine who's posting valid information and who's blowing smoke is to go to the dropzone they are considering jumping at and talk to the instructors there. That way you're getting first hand information from a known good source.

Owned by Remi #?

[chuckakers 370]

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I guess all in all, what I’ve been reading has just shaken my faith in the sport, a sport I thought was incredibly safe.

If you think jumping from an aircraft is "incredibly safe", you should consider bowling.

[kkeenan 13]

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...shaken my faith in the sport, a sport I thought was incredibly safe.

It's good that you are trying to find out about this sport before trying it. Unfortunately, the incident you have read about is true. To go into this sport with the idea that it is, "incredibly safe", is a bad idea. It is as safe as each individual can make it, but is subject to all the same frailties as other human endevors. One thing it has that differs from a lot of activities is its high-speed, high-energy aspects. That means that any mistakes can happen very quickly and can sometimes have very extreme consequences. There is also a random aspect to it that can cause bad things to happen sometimes to someone who's doing everything "right".

It is a sport of risk taking. It is practiced by people who (hopefully) understand these risks and prepare themselves for them. There are many safety procedures and devices, but people who are inattentive, either continuously or just at the wrong time, are removed from the sport on a regular basis.

Skydiving has many beautiful and fulfilling things about it. The risks can be managed, but there's no way it approaches "incredibly safe". It's best that you understand this before getting involved. If you don't come to grips with the fact that the name in next Monday's Incidents Forum may be yours, then you may well want to try something different.

Kevin Keenan
Florida

_____________________________________
Dude, you are so awesome...
Can I be on your ash jump ?

[jsaxton 0]

There is nothing "safe" about this sport. The airplane could fail, the gear could fail, your instructor could fail, you could fail.

If you participate in this sport long enough you will almost certainly be injured, possibly even die.

[UDSkyJunkie 0]

Freakyflyer,

You bring up valid concerns, and I'm happy to see someone actually do some reasearch and ask intelligent questions. Some of what I'm about to say has already been said by others, but I'll put it out there anyway.

It is definately common for first-jump students to panic, flail, not pull on time, lose altitude awareness, ect, and absolutely the job of the instructor to deal with those situations. However, students who do the above would not be allowed to progress to the next level in the student program.

The deceased was not a first jump student, he was actually nearing the end of the AFF progression. during his particular dive, he was instructed to turn away from the instructor and track (read: move away rapidly) prior to opening his parachute. This is a common practice late in the AFF program as tracking is a necessary skill. Such an instruction would not be allowed if the student had not demonstrated reasonable stability and calmness on previous levels. This is because once you track away you really are on your own. Training wheels are off.

It seems that the student had an uneventful skydive until AFTER his turned to track and was away from his instructor, at which time, for some reason, he became unstable and began to panic. At this point, the instructor is in a very bad situation... he has about 10 seconds to catch and pull for a student who is wildly unstable and already moving away from him quickly. Chances are that nobody, regardless of skill level, could have saved this student. The instructor did try to save him anyway, and in fact got so low himself that his AAD fired and he landed under both his main and reserve, putting his own life in jeopardy.

The student was equipped with his own AAD, which also fired the reserve parachute. Unfortuately, he had the great misfortune of being so unstable that he actually became tangled with the reserve during deployment. This is a very rare occurance but not unprecidented.

I hope you can see from the above that this was not an incident that could necessarily have been easily prevented... it resulted mostly from bad luck and yes, from the poor emotional control of the student. If any mistake was made on the part of the staff, it would have been advancing the student before he was ready for that level... I will not speculate on that as I have zero knowledge of the jumpers past performance, but I can tell you that many students show no indication of a problem, and then may panic "out of the blue" on a later jump. In fact, some extremely experienced jumpers (literally with 1,000's of jumps) have died due to panicing and the poor decisions or lack of action resulting from said panic.

I am a bit concerned that you say you believed skydiving to be "incredibly safe." The reality is that skydiving is NOT "safe" at all. It is a risky action that is managed by training, preparation, reliable, well maintained equipment, redundancy, idiot-proofing, and some damn gutsy, highly qualified instructors. All of the above have turned skydiving from an incredibly dangerous sport to a sport that carries risks of reasonable magnitude (IMO). For a ballpark estimate, approximately 2 - 2.5 million skydives were made in the united states in 2007, resulting in approximately 20-25 fatalities.

Hope this answers your questions, and I hope you go to make your first skydive!

"Some people follow their dreams, others hunt them down and beat them mercilessly into submission."

[skybytch 259]

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While you can say it’s the student’s responsibility to make sure their pack fits correctly, isn’t that kind of like a theme park blaming a patron for not verifying the rollercoaster track was complete?

Yes. Skydiving is NOT a theme park ride, and dropzones are NOT theme parks. Dropzones are usually run by small business people with shallow pockets as opposed to big businesses with deep pockets. Dropzones don't have large insurance policies like theme parks do. One lawsuit - even one brought by someone who did everything wrong - could easily financially ruin a dropzone.

Thus came the waiver you'll sign before you jump and in a big way the culture of personal responsibility that still exists in the sport - the culture that makes it the students "fault" that they panicked or spun or whatever, and the culture that makes even students responsible for their own decisions and errors.

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I guess all in all, what I’ve been reading has just shaken my faith in the sport, a sport I thought was incredibly safe.

Good. It's much better to come into the sport already understanding that it is not safe than it is to come to that realization when one or more people that you've come to know and love die doing it.

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Isn’t this the place for such discussions?

I don't think that a public internet forum is a good place for discussions in which a person's words could possibly be used in legal actions.

[firstime 0]

My guess, your occupation is not sales??

[DanG 1]

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My guess, your occupation is not sales??

And perhaps the occupation of the OP is litigation?

I'm sorry, but this thread is the perfect lawyer troll. Why feed it?

- Dan G

[beowulf 1]

I find this the most disturbing part of your post.

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isn’t that kind of like a theme park blaming a patron for not verifying the rollercoaster track was complete?

Skydiving does not compare to rollercoasters or theme parks. Skydiving is not a safe sport. Minor mistakes can result in serious injury or death, despite all safety precautions.

[Andy9o8 0]

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My guess, your occupation is not sales??

And perhaps the occupation of the OP is litigation?

I'm sorry, but this thread is the perfect lawyer troll. Why feed it?

- Dan G

Hmm, let's see...spelling, grammar and syntax are all correct; thoughts are logical, cohesive and well-structured; presentation is articulate; the roller-coaster analogy has a certain familiar aura; and there's a certain je ne sais quois hint of verbosity for its own sake (also a bit familiar).

Yes, it certainly could be.