Friday Freakout: High-Speed Collision, Skydiver Knocked Unconscious For 15 Seconds!
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WHAT HAPPENED
These 2 wingsuiters had a high-speed collision while setting up a 7-way XRW jump, which resulted in one of the skydivers getting knocked unconscious for 15 seconds and suffering a “minor” brain bleed. Wild!
The full story is a bit complicated, so allow us to introduce the cast of characters.
This was a 7-way XRW group.
— Jumper 1 was an experienced canopy pilot
— Jumpers 2,3, and 4 were ]experienced wingsuit pilots familiar with XRW
—— Jumpers 1-4 are what we are going to call the "XRW Group"
— Jumper 5 (who gets knocked out) was newer to XRW, and going to shadow the "XRW Group"
— Jumper 6 (who hits jumper 5) wanted to take a dock
— Jumper 7 was a newbie who was going to just chill
On the ground, Jumper 5 explained that he was going to shadow the jump above and to the right of the formation. However, just prior to him explaining this, Jumper 6 walked away. Everyone other than Jumper 6 heard Jumper 5 explain his plan.
Exit order was to be 1-2-3-4-5-6-7, but as they were boarding the plain, jumpers 5 and 6 switched spots because 5 was worried due his flying faster and not wanting to overshoot if he left second to last. Upon exit, J5 was flying in his assigned slot up and to the right of the XRW group, but as he picked up speed he pushed out his chest and picked his head up to bleed off forward speed, and then also brought his knees up to break. Doing so caused him to pop up. Unfortunately, J6 was above him in a fast-fall-rate, slow-forward-speed configuration. They collided at about 9,500 feet AGL.
J5 lost consciousness for 15 seconds, regained it at 6k, and deployed at 3.5k. He landed safely but had a minor brain bleed and a sprained elbow. J6 had a bicep bleed. Both were jumping 4 weeks later.
WHY DID IT HAPPEN
Miscommunication and Bad Positioning
J5 noted that “the accident was caused by a mixture of miscommunication and bad flying, a series of small mistakes with large consequences. If any of the mistakes had been avoided, this would likely have been avoided.” First, the fact that J6 walked away during the briefing resulted in their not knowing where everyone was going to be. That, in turn, resulted in them flying above J5, who didn’t realize that someone was right above them when they braked and popped up.
HOW COULD IT BE PREVENTED
Communication and Good Positioning (Duh!)
This should go for every jump, but if you’re planning a large and complex group jump with something as complicated as XRW then it should really be underscored: Everyone needs to know what’s up. Everyone should be at the mockup, everyone needs to be at the briefing, and everyone needs to know exactly what everyone else is planning to do on the jump. The point that directly correlates with this is that no one should be flying directly above someone because — as we see here — if the lower jumper pops up or corks, you're going to slam right into them. This isn’t a wingsuit issue either; this goes for every jump, not only for the issues pointed out here, but also because if someone has a premature deployment, you don’t want to be eating their nylon at 120 MPH.
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