Rare Death Under Investigation
A strange and tragic accident happened at AerOhio Skydiving
School in Sterling, OH according to news stories Sunday. A tandem
dive student fell free of her instructor and plunged to her
death.
Preliminary reports said that 44-year-old Ellen McWilliams
"slipped free of her harness" -- an accident of extreme rarity and
improbability. The tandem instructor with whom she jumped has not
been identified.
In tandem skydiving, a
novice student is harnessed to an experienced instructor. During
freefall, a drogue stabilizes the pair and allows the instructor to
teach the student how to maintain stability and control and to
maneuver in freefall. After the instructor opens the chute, he or
she steers the canopy to the ground and instructor and student land
together. The student has no independent chute, although the
instructor has a reserve parachute in case of main chute
malfunction.
Tandem skydives are also a popular way for non-skydivers to
experience the sport, either to see if they want to take it up
seriously, or just as a one-off thrill. AerOhio takes tandem
students up on a walk-in basis on weekends during the season, and
on weekdays just requires a call ahead to the company's 800
number.
A tandem skydive at the center usually costs $239, but AerOhio
was running a $40-off special for Memorial Day Weekend. The center,
owned by Sherry and Tim Butcher, also offers Accelerated Free Fall
instruction and has quite a large staff. The center has a good
reputation in the tight-knit skydiving community. Indeed, they have
never had a student jumper seriously injured before. Tandem jumps
have been particularly safe.
"In our entire history of doing tandem skydiving, only two
injuries have ever occurred. Both were broken ankles of the
hairline fracture variety," the drop zone's promotional material
says. "These numbers sound even better when you find out that we
have done over 10,000 tandem training jumps since 1997." But
parachuting is an inherently hazardous activity, that only
has been tamed by decades of hard work by safety-focused
people.
The company's website includes a frank
acknowledgment of this risk. "With all of that said, please
understand that no one anywhere, can ever guarantee perfect safety
because this is still skydiving that we are talking about, and
there are rare moments when even if you do everything right, a
person can still be injured or die."
The accident remains under investigation by the local Sheriff
and will also be investigated by the US Parachute Association.
AerOhio is a USPA member center.
While skydiving accidents are unfortunately not rare, tandem
jump fatalities definitely are. A number of jumpers reached Monday
could not recall another incident of an able-bodied tandem student
falling out of his or her harness, although it has happened with a
paraplegic student before. (Tandem instructors now take special
measures with paralyzed students, whose limbs can flex in ways that
harness designers didn't anticipate, and who can't use their
muscles to put the limbs back in position).
In the interests of safety, we recommend that all jumpers and
instructors review this page from Sport Parachutist's Safety
Journal that addresses the question: "Can you fall out
of a properly fastened harness?"
Aero-News extends our condolences to the owners and staff of
AerOhio, to the tandem instructor involved, and of course to the
family and friends of the late Ms McWilliams.