MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australian accident investigators on Thursday launched dramatic pictures of a skydiver’s parachute changing into entangled on an airplane’s tail, leaving him dangling at 4,500 meters (15,000 ft.)
The skydiver, Adrian Ferguson, used a hook knife to chop himself free and sustained minor leg accidents throughout the incident on Sept. 20 that started at Tully Airport in Queensland state. The pilot and 16 different parachutists on board the Cessna Caravan that day weren’t damage.
The Australian Transport Security Bureau launched the video with its report on its investigation into the mishap.
The airplane had reached the specified altitude the place the skydivers had been planning to execute a 16-way formation leap. A seventeenth parachutist was at an open door ready to report video because the others jumped.
Ferguson was leaving the airplane when the ripcord of his reserve chute turned snagged on a wing flap, the report stated.
The chute launched and instantly jerked Fergson backward. He knocked the digital camera operator clear from the airplane and right into a free fall. Ferguson’s legs then struck the path’s horizontal stabilizer earlier than the chute tangled round it and left him dangling.
Ferguson used a knife to chop 11 strains that enabled him to fall from the airplane with a part of the torn chute.
He launched his essential chute, which absolutely inflated regardless of changing into entangled with remnants of the reserve chute, and he landed safely.
In the meantime, a lot of the different skydivers had jumped. The pilot was left with two skydivers aboard battling to manage the airplane with a part of the chute nonetheless tangled across the tail.
The pilot made a mayday name and was ready to bail out sporting an emergency chute. However Brisbane air visitors authorities determined he had sufficient management of the airplane to land safely at Tully. It landed with out incident.
“Carrying a hook knife — although it is not a regulatory requirement — could be lifesaving in the event of a premature reserve parachute deployment,” the bureau’s chief commissioner Angus Mitchell stated.
