coozer

I understand the student was either on radio or if not they should know that landing down wind into the landing pattern is bad. Doing a low turn to go into wind is also bad, so their mistake might have been made earlier when they should have been concentrating on setting up for landing the correct way. However the majority of the blame in this case is on the TM for not looking where they were going and not being aware of who was in the air with them. They had the experience to avoid this. At least some blame can be given to whoever was in control of the lower canopy though. Like every incident it is a combination of mistakes that lead to the fact... one of those mistakes was that canopy being there going in that direction.

Those that think the 180 turn is the problem are not really seeing the issue here. Yes it is both pilots fault, whether or not the lower canopy was a student on radio. If they were on radio it was the person that put them there that is responsible fore their part in the incident. they were landing down wind into the flow of traffic on the landing area. this can be determined by the parachute doing a nice landing in the other direction at the start of the video. However, as much as the incident can be blamed on the actions of both parties the majority of the responsibility is on the tandem master. The 180 is not the problem, I would venture to guess that that instructor has done 180's successfully hundreds if not thousands of times. If they flew straight into the other canopy, would flying straight be the problem? If they spiraled into them at 2000 feet, would spiraling be the problem? The problem is general awareness. They must have known there was another canopy in the vicinity, if it was a student on radio, they would have known there was a student on their load and when they did their turn they obviously did not look to see if their path was clear. As a tandem master that has done thousands of tandems and thousands of 180's on tandems at drop zones where all the instructors do 180's a thousand times a year... I can honestly say I have never seen anyone hook a tandem into the ground and that is witnessing many many thousands of tandems. The 180 is not the problem. The people focusing on the 180 turn and not the fact that they were obviously not aware of what was going on around them are only adding to the problem. Canopy collisions have killed and injured many people, they are a result of poor awareness and this incident is not different to any of them.