lucky woman survives skydiving harness fail

Oxman

Oxman

Well-Known Member
http://now.msn.com/living/0525-skydiving-jump-goes-wrong-harness.aspx

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To celebrate her 80th birthday, a woman named Laverne decided to try skydiving. She's excited to go and tells a cameraman it's something she's wanted to do for 10 years. But once it's her turn to jump, Laverne has clearly had a change of heart. She can been seeing mouthing the word "No" and even holding on to the door frame,.....

After watching the video...the beating that guy would get!
 
Wow. Pretty lucky. I don't know how she stayed in what was left of the harness for that deployment and all the way to the ground
 
This happened at Lodi, California, which is a notoriously reckless dropzone. The same dropzone was fined $10,000 by the FAA for ignoring maintenance inspections on their aircraft.

I believe the tandem master in this video had his tandem rating revoked for a year as a result of this incident.
 
If you purchase a tandem jump at Lodi you get a free sitfly coach jump ;)

I heard the vidiot lost his job also.
 
Not knowing poop about skydiving (and not wanting to, thanks), it seems to me that while the cameraman didn't do any actual good, the fact that he moved in to help at what one can only imagine to be a significant degree of personal risk speaks well of him.
 
At our dropzone, there's a requirement to be height and weight proportionate. I've heard stories of "Bottom Heavy" women folding up and slipping out through the bottom of the harness. Looks like that might be what happened here.

Also, the article talks about how she obviously didn't want to jump, but tandem students panicking and grabbing onto stuff is what happens almost every time. You should never force someone to jump who doesn't want to, but it's possible he didn't hear her in the wind.
 
I've heard the bottom heavy stories to, but you can clearly see she's not in the harness correctly in the airplane. At the DZ I worked at the guys were always checking each other, even tandem.
 
z987k said:
I've heard the bottom heavy stories to, but you can clearly see she's not in the harness correctly in the airplane. At the DZ I worked at the guys were always checking each other, even tandem.
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Yea for sure. And talking to some of the tandem instructors at my DZ today they said it was obvious she didn't want jump.
 
cstewart6 said:
Yea for sure. And talking to some of the tandem instructors at my DZ today they said it was obvious she didn't want jump.
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It was. In my 300 hours I flew jumpers, we only ever had 1 back out, but it was very obvious. Just like this woman. It is normal for them to grab •... even a mixture knob in the 182, just pawing around trying to get out the door, but they don't lock their arms and hold on for dear life.
 
jrh said:
This happened at Lodi, California, which is a notoriously reckless dropzone. The same dropzone was fined $10,000 by the FAA for ignoring maintenance inspections on their aircraft.
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Actually, they were fined $664,000 (the largest fine ever assesed to a skydiving center), which was followed up by another fine of $269.000 for allegedly continuing to operate their aircraft without the required inspections/repairs.

http://www.lodinews.com/news/article_53167b87-feee-54e6-8e7f-e0b68aaa1fc5.html
 
I remember hearing their King Air on the radio all the time flying around Sacramento. They sure are a busy operation.
 
jrh said:
This happened at Lodi, California, which is a notoriously reckless dropzone. The same dropzone was fined $10,000 by the FAA for ignoring maintenance inspections on their aircraft.

I believe the tandem master in this video had his tandem rating revoked for a year as a result of this incident.
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Why would I jump out of a perfectly good airplane?
Sir, have you SEEN our airplanes?
 
periksmoen said:
Actually, they were fined $664,000 (the largest fine ever assesed to a skydiving center), which was followed up by another fine of $269.000 for allegedly continuing to operate their aircraft without the required inspections/repairs.
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Ahhh, that's right, it was significantly higher than $10k. I forgot the details.

How are these guys still in business after a fine like that??? I can't imagine their margins are high enough to have hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting around in spare bank accounts.
 
jrh said:
Ahhh, that's right, it was significantly higher than $10k. I forgot the details.

How are these guys still in business after a fine like that??? I can't imagine their margins are high enough to have hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting around in spare bank accounts.
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That's what you get when you save all that money on maintenance.
 
jrh said:
Ahhh, that's right, it was significantly higher than $10k. I forgot the details.

How are these guys still in business after a fine like that??? I can't imagine their margins are high enough to have hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting around in spare bank accounts.
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The article said they're still fighting the first one in court, and they plan on doing the same with the second fine.
 
I fly just north of Lodi in Sacramento. I cannot believe how many loads they do daily. A couple months ago someone died down there while I was flying in Sac, and they were still doing loads after that incident the same day. There is a busy freeway that borders Lodi airport. You can imagine how easy it is for people to end up short in the middle of that freeway. I feel like I hear about at least one person a year dying down there.
 
grkero said:
I fly just north of Lodi in Sacramento. I cannot believe how many loads they do daily. A couple months ago someone died down there while I was flying in Sac, and they were still doing loads after that incident the same day. There is a busy freeway that borders Lodi airport. You can imagine how easy it is for people to end up short in the middle of that freeway. I feel like I hear about at least one person a year dying down there.
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Well, to be fair, you can't expect a dropzone to shut down after a fatality any more than you can expect an airport to shut down after a fatal plane crash. Business as usual must resume at some point and I don't see the difference between same day as an incident or the next.

And having one fatality per year isn't an unheard-of statistic at very large, busy dropzones. That might happen even at reputable places, like Perris Valley.

Still, it doesn't eliminate the fact Lodi is a scary place that ought to get shut down.
 
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