It looks like the AC descended soon after the drop, but wingsuiters don’t descend very fast so somehow they caught up with each other unexpectedly and the aircraft hit the wingsuiter. From what I can tell the pilot has been banned from flying and his employer fined €20k (out of which €10k is suspended).
Conviction: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-67494130
More info: https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/pilot-chopped-off-wingsuited-skydivers-head/
I have never flown skydivers, so I have no idea if there are conventions for who will be where after a jump, but this does seem like something to brief. At my airfield the jump plane usually lands before the skydivers, so there is clearly a period of time where the aircraft “crosses” the jumpers. I can see with a wingsuit that they would not have the same trajectory as someone in freefall. Very tragic incident.
If there are people who are equally crazy as skydivers, it is the pilots who fly them. With a turbine powered skydiving plane, like a Pilatus Porter, I have often seen them descend almost vertically after the drop, much faster than the parachutists. Crazy stunt.
Five years ago at Dunkeswell a completely out of control skydiving student decsended out of low cloud, swept very low across the airfield straight *down*wind on a very windy day and very fast and missed the wing of my plane by 5 feet, slamming into a car at the fuel pumps. She was extremely lucky to have lived. Her helmet left a very deep dent in the car. I jumped on the phone and arranged ambulance and helimed rescue. Her f***cking ‘instructor’ tried to hush the whole thing up.
Buckerfan wrote:
If there are people who are equally crazy as skydivers
There seems to be a confusion of terminology here. “Skydiving” are activities where people jump out of airplanes. Most of them carry a parachute. Although many pilots fail to see the point, parachuters can’t be called “crazy”.
The accident in France involved a wingsuit flyer and I assume that the incident you referred to did as well. Those indeed can be called crazy – at least their death rate is unreasonably high.
what is equally awful is how and who did retrieve the detached head. I supposed it didn’t fall in one’s garden during afternoon party…
Those indeed can be called crazy – at least their death rate is unreasonably high.
What a horrible accident from any party’s perspective.
I wonder if the pilot was informed that one of the jumpers would be in a wingsuit.
gallois wrote:
I wonder if the pilot was informed that one of the jumpers would be in a wingsuit.
There is a lot of jumping at my airport and I know some of the jump pilots. I have not spoken to any since finding out about this accident. My daughter is also a jumper, so I have hung around the pre-jump briefings a few times. There are frequently jumpers with wingsuits, so it’s not a rare situation, at least at LSGN, LSGY, and LSGB.
From what I have seen, the pilots never talk to the individual jumpers, only someone organizing the jumps. It will be interesting to ask them about this accident and the outcome of the trial. There is certainly something to learn.
I know a pilot who used to fly jumpers in Spain with a twin turboprop. They don’t even shut down between flights, let alone talk to the jumpers.
