The Day CYPRES Saved My Life… Somewhere in Germany

Monday, October 21, 2024

The ideal version of things is that a CYPRES unit protects you for an entire skydiving career and never activates to save your life. Saves are relatively rare, but they do happen sometimes and each one is a unique set of factors that offers insight into the skydiving process. Gathering and sharing the data and lessons involved is an important part of the work we do at Airtec, and everyone can benefit from the stories. 

Anyone who has skydived for long enough understands well that incidents can come from the most unusual places, but there are also circumstances – such as being brand new to the sport – where landing under a reserve parachute following a CYPRES activation is a little bit more common.   

Sharing the details of an incident while remaining anonymous, or named and without judgment, is encouraged across the aviation industry, as every lesson helps to move things forward and transparency aids one and all…        

We are a busy, full-time dropzone – one of the only full-time operations in the South of Germany. We generally run a lot of AFF courses across the season with seventy, eighty or sometimes a hundred students a year. 

The first three AFF levels went ok. Not super good, but definitely more than ok. When you teach a lot of AFF you recognise the different kinds or categories of things that need to be fixed. He was quite stiff, quite nervous – not excessively so, but tension manifests as different things. This time his arms were coming down, as though he was trying to grab at the air, which de-arches you, and his legs we curled up – ultimately making him too unstable.

The student was noticeably a little bit more nervous than previously. Level three AFF is with two instructors, and then four is with one. Moving on to one instructor who is going to let you go and move in front can be a psychological challenge, even if during level three you have been released by both instructors. On level three we let him go for the first time, carefully when it works, when he is staying straight or turns but only a little bit. Then if it is good we continue to level four where we let him go after exit and the plan is we do some 90-degree turns.  

Image courtesy of dropzone.

For this student, the instructor felt comfortable letting him go, but from then he was just constantly pulling his arms down and curling his legs – which when done together make you want to backslide quite a lot. He began turning into the instructor, which if unattended would have caused a flat spin. The instructor went in close and stopped the motion, but was not able to grab the student properly due to the increasing speed. From here the student lost all altitude awareness, and although the instructor was able to go in a second time, things had become more complicated as the student flipped onto his back. When someone is on their back with arms in and legs completely up, they go fast. Almost freefly, head-down fast.

The student did not check their altitude after initially losing awareness but did attempt to deploy his main parachute at around 1200 meters. his canopy was open at around 350 meters, he pulled at around 600. The instructor followed him until maybe 700, which is low but not excessively so then deployed and landed normally in line with the AFF process. When they get away and go that fast, there is not much more you can do.

Image courtesy of dropzone.

The instructor involved is an experienced skydiver, but with a greater percentage of tandems than AFF jumps. He has maybe 300 AFF jumps, so is not new, but relatively speaking has fewer than others on our staff. We are a busy school with good information sharing and education culture, but ultimately you have to find your way as an instructor with practice and experience. You have to be able to give the students enough room to be able to progress, without letting them escape your control when required – which can be tricky at times. You get better at recognising the signs, but there are always surprises that can come from seemingly nowhere. In this case, the student had displayed stopping a turn which earned him a little more space.       

I was quite careful in the beginning, then with some jumps behind me, I became more and more relaxed. Then I made one bad error and became super careful again, staying that way for a couple of hundred more jumps. Being a good teacher is finding the mix.

Image courtesy of dropzone.

As you might expect, the student was a bit shaken and took some time. Until that point, it had gone very well, with it being his third jump of the day. We normally do a maximum of three AFF stages with our students to avoid fatigue, so it is not like it was his fifth jump or something. He came back the next day to jump again, paying to repeat his level four. I elected to go with them to make it a level three again before moving him on – and yes with the same instructor from his CYPRES save jump. He then continued with me instead – a decision made by the instructor and not the student.

Image courtesy of dropzone.

I think the reason why this happened is the stress level of the student. Until this jump, everything had gone well, with no indication of any physical or mental barriers to moving quickly and successfully through the rest of the program. The jumps before we more than fine, they were really good. Anyone can lose a student though, regardless of experience. Sometimes it just happens, and when they end up so fast there is nothing further you can do. The AFF process has good rules and processes to keep everyone safe, and this is why we have the CYPRES. Once you have been in skydiving long enough you understand well that things can happen out of nowhere, that incidents can occur even with no real mistakes made, and that there is always a lesson to share.       

 

  

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