It’s an American reg Twotter (Twin Otter in English) so I’m guessing it’s Stateside, also judging by the scenery and the sunshine it could well be Florida.
As a jump pilot with thousands of sorties under my belt I can quite categorically say that the situation depicted is an extremely dangerous one, not only for the hapless jumper but also for the aircraft and it’s occupants.
It’s not an unusual occurence and there are many documented fatal accidents due to chutes opening in the door and wrapping themselves around the tailplane.
The guy who was hung up probably ‘cut away’ (two toggles and a hard pull) then cleared the aircraft before pulling his reserve. That is if he was still conscious after being thrown around violently in the slipstream or hadn’t hit his head on the empennage on his way past!!
I notice all the other jumpers did what they were supposed to do in such a situation — vacate the aircraft with haste, whilst videoing their unfortunate colleague trailing behind the aircraft.
Now to the pilot — I’m sure we could all put ourselves in his seat — imagine your at the top of a 20 minute, full power climb (the twotter prob quicker), plane full of jumpers, so it’s heavy, you carefully position yourself on the run in at 12000, flying at about 1.3Vs (fairly slowly!!) the door gets slid open, lots of noise and chewing gum wrappers flying around inside, people move back down the plane, lots of shouting, nose rises, speed falls, trim forward and keep trimming, jumpmaster calls for the cut so you reduce power, remember you are looking forwards, particularly at the ASI, guys chute pops open, wraps itself round the tail and he gets dragged out of the door to become a trailing weight behind the aircraft. What do you think happens to the aircraft?? Full and violent stall, probably within 2 seconds. Everything is forward, trim and column, so with a turbine it’s a matter of firewalling the power and getting the nose down, very easy once everyone is out, then your worry is getting down with restricted controls and possibly a human being in tow. Pilot has to have his wits about him and lightening reactions, mainly because he can’t actually SEE whats happening, He can only feel the controls and see the instruments.
It’s not a nice scenario and it’s one which I am very wary of, more so than the engine failing — at least I know what to expect when that happens….
If it’s not a turbine the pilot has little choice but to take to his bale out rig and get out of there as fast as possible, piston singles rarely survive such an occurrence..
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