Safety overview VVP 2020

 

Overall numbers

year	Total jumps	Jul-Oct	Accidents	Incidents	Reserve procedures
2018	65 749	38 738	25	235	49
2019	51 977	25 839	16	117	22
2020	25 406	24 268	24	147	24

 In order to compare we only take the figures for July – October for jumps, incidents and reserve procedures.

• This partly distorts the data. In a normal year the season start and after season have a slightly higher number of incidents giving a brighter summer season. This effect is absent for the data of 2020.
• July is normally a peak month. Even with the week openings on the different dropzones the jumpnumbers were significantly lower in 2020 (vs 2018 -53%, vs 2019 -27%).  August also numbered 10% less jumps.

·         

per jump	Incidents	Reserve procedures	Accidents
2018	165	791	1.550
2019	221	1.175	1.615
2020	165	1.011	1.011

 The number of incident reports was back on the level of 2018 (which was higher than 2019) with one report per 165 jumps. This is good as these reports allow us to learn from mistakes: no reports, no learning.

• The number of reserve procedures is with one cutaway per 1011 jumps on a healthy level. Certainly if you take into account that this season was feared to have more startup mistakes due to the long period of inactivity.
• This decrease is on the account of skydivers with more than 500 jumps. With 58% they still have the most cutaways.
• For beginners (up to B-license) there is even a rise in absolute numbers compared to previous years.
• The number of accident reports on the other hand was never as high as in 2020 with 1 in 1011 jumps compared to 1 in 1600 jumps in the previous two years.
• 54% of these accidents involved skydivers with less than 25 jumps.
• The number of accidents for skydivers between 25-200 jumps rose to 25%.
• For C-license and higher, the accidents diminue to 21% of the total.
• The rise is entirely for the group of least experienced skydivers.

Accidents: 83% on landing

	2018	2019	2020	Total
0- student	54%	50%	54%	53%
A- license	4%	0%	0%	2%
B- license	15%	6%	25%	17%
C- license	4%	6%	8%	6%
D- license	23%	38%	13%	21%
Total	26	16	24	66

•  As stated before almost 80% of accidents are made by skydivers with less than 200 jumps so they also rank high in accidents on landing
• Landings with little wind and fledgling skydivers
• one cause for injury is flaring too high (5)
• flaring too late (4)
• not flaring enough (2) (or not being able to run fast enough)
• Landing on uneven terrain mostly caused by landing out
• one case where a tandem student didn't retract her legs
• One serious accident occurred when an experienced skydiver was flying final in half brakes in turbulence. Wind shear made his canopy collapse and he fell to the ground from 10m causing a cracked vertebra.
• A serious accident was the result of a wrap during a CRW jump. This resulted in one of the two skydivers being completely enveloped in the main canopy of the other skydiver. The other skydiver cut away and continued flying along with the wrapped skydiver. He was guiding his mate using their Bluetooth communications module. But out of a reflex the wrapped skydiver flared on landing, one steering line was blocked and this caused skydiver to crash in a turn. This resulted in a broken pelvis.
• We have one dislocated shoulder in freefall of an AFF student. The student had a pre existing condition but had had a successful operation. He was free of complaints but in the level 4 skydive he dislocated his shoulder. This caused an incontrollable spin and the AAD fired.
• We had one freefall collision in with a 2-way freefly. One skydiver hit her knee on the helmet of fellow skydiver
• One skydiver had twists in her canopy. Trying too long to untwist the lines and coming below 2000 feet and skydiver decided that this was too low to do a cutaway and landed canopy with twisted lines.
• One tandem student hurt her neck due to the opening shock of the tandem canopy.

Incidents

• One skydiver went up with an AAD which was wrongly set. Instead of being set in pro mode (he was jumping high performance canopy) it was in student mode. He had wanted to set the  activation 150 feet higher. The display read S150. This does not mean speed 150 but student 150 feet higher than the preset altitude. This caused the AAD to fire during his swoop. Luckily for him this happened when you while he was flaring out so he wasn't hurt.
• Quite a few mentions of chest straps wrongly routed. Most of them were caught during preflight checks by instructors. But in one case the skydiver was under canopy when he noticed that his chest strap was almost completely
• Maybe the winner for 2020 was a skydiver sitting on the van ready to go to the aircraft to jump without a rig. As the DSO (DZ safety Officer – dd centrumleider) asked him whether he was ready to jump, he was unaware and had to be pointed to his error. He didn't have that many jumps this year, was preoccupied with other worries and was rushing.
• In the plane always be careful when moving around. We have one case where we had a main canopy opening in the aircraft because a videographer was moving around to make good shots of a tandem passenger. When sitting down his main pin came out.
• One hop and pop jumper almost went out before the green lights came on. Another made such a powerful jump that he missed the horizontal stabilizer by little. In another case the pilot forgot that instead of one he had three hop & pops and was increasing speed just as #2 was planning to exit with a potential dangerous situation.
• Several incidents involved jump order and exit separation. In one case skydivers started (wrongly) interpreting the ground speed data leading to a group opening close to another one.
• There are a few reports indicating that exit separation is not resilient to jumpers who track very far after a FS or FF jump up or down the jump run.
• Several reports involved tracking and tracing:
• In one case one tracking group deviated from the plan to fly around a cloud opening to close for comfort with the other group.
• Two cases with (inexperienced) jumpers tracking up or down the jump run.
• Several cases where a tracking leader had no clue where he was flying with close calls as a consequence.
• Only one report of a FF zoo load where one participant got lost and opened close to other participants. Not enough experience of the participant for the group size and the absence of a briefing where the main causes.
• Several premature openings due to equipment that was not fit (anymore) for the jumps that were made with it. No harm was done, the root cause investigated and riggers were put to work to avoid this to happening again.
• One case of unintentional cutaway when the cutaway pillow got caught in the wing of a videoman who saw his main disappearing when he opened after filming a tandem pair.
• Not flying a correct landing pattern makes for an overwhelming majority of incident reports.
• Several reports of skydivers crossing patterns with dangerous situations as a consequence
• Several reports of people flying in the wrong direction when landing
• Several reports of jumpers not respecting landing zones
• Several reports of parachutists coming in no fly zones (eg hangars in Moorsele)
• One report of a skydiver crossing the runway at 150ft causing the Supervan to abort its landing approach.
• One report where an experienced skydiver lands in the wrong direction and two student skydivers follow his example assuming he knows best.
• And the oddities:
• One skydiver wanted to manifest himself with a beer in his hand “as one beer does not hurt”.
• One skydiver succeeded in missing his load twice on the same day.
• A parachutist was unconscious under canopy up to 300 feet. This was caused by leg straps which were too tight.
• One skydiver landed with a line over and showed after landing a photo he made of the line in flight to the DSO.
• One jumper lost his wallet in freefall.

Reserve procedures

• Half of the reserve procedures were due to line twists. The cause of these line twists is rarely mentioned.
• Two cutaways were due to tension knots.
• 3 reserve procedures were caused by a line over. All of them were by less experienced jumpers.
• As mentioned in the accidents we had one AAD fire due to a student having a dislocated shoulder.
• As mentioned in the incidents one was an unintentional AAD fire and another an unintentional cutaway.
• 20% of the cutaways was on high performance canopies.
• 2 cutaways were on tandem canopies.