Skyhawk injured on 2024 Canada Day jump

[McG]

That’s a rough landing.

SkyHawks member seriously injured in Canada Day parachute performance on Parliament Hill

A member of the Canadian Armed Forces Parachute Team, known as the SkyHawks, was seriously injured during a Canada Day performance on Parliament Hill on Monday.

ottawa.ctvnews.ca

 

[PrairieFella]

Word on the street is he'll make it. Fuck he hit hard though.

 

[lenaitch]

Word on the street is he'll make it. Fuck he hit hard though.

Wow, no kidding. I don't know the first thing about parachuting (other than 'don't') but it looked like his 'chute was spilling air at the centre of the trailing edge.

 

[brihard]

I know that space on the Hill; I wonder if he was coming in a bit high and was worried about gliding in to the stone wall, and decided legs were better than face and head?

 

[Jarnhamar]

Look at all the dirt bags jumping up to film him after he hits the ground.

 

[OldSolduer]

I know that space on the Hill; I wonder if he was coming in a bit high and was worried about gliding in to the stone wall, and decided legs were better than face and head?

I don't know a whole lot about parachuting. I bet there are some SMEs on here that do.

That looked awful. I practically felt my shinbones drive up into my femurs.

I hope the jumper makes full recovery. As Billy used to say "he got a bonus".

 

[rmc_wannabe]

From what I can tell (not a jumper), it looks like he was trying to avoid landing in the crowd. Threaded the needle between wall, stairs, lamp post, and barrier and hit hard. Obviously not the ideal landing, but shit... that could have been a lot worse of a day for him.

A speedy recovery for sure

 

[KevinB]

I’m not a demonstration jumper. The size of those chutes is significantly smaller than typical military rectangular steerable MFP chutes - they are built for speed and maneuverability.

Generally when jumping steerable chutes one flies a pattern to land into the wind and gradually bring the chute to a stall so one can do a walk away landing.

Given the video it’s hard to tell why the jumper ended up in the position he did, but he seems to have run out of room for the landing and decided that pulling the risers to spill air instead of using the toggles to stall the chute at that point was the best CoA.

Generally for Military Freefall one usually has senior jumpers first - so the less experienced ones can follow their track to the LZ. With the SkyHawks one would expect them all to be experienced - but personally I’ve never tried to pull risers on a steerable chute as the whole point of the toggles to to enable better steering control and trade speed for lift.

 

[kratz]

Generally for Military Freefall one usually has senior jumpers first - so the less experienced ones can follow their track to the LZ. With the SkyHawks one would expect them all to be experienced - but personally I’ve never tried to pull risers on a steerable chute as the whole point of the toggles to to enable better steering control and trade speed for lift.

I have no jump experience.
The highlighted part sounds similar to hitting the emergency brakes when you really wanted to reach for the break pedal?

 

[KevinB]

I have no jump experience.
The highlighted part sounds similar to hitting the emergency brakes when you really wanted to reach for the break pedal?

Not necessarily, given the placement of the video it’s impossible to see what the jumper saw - and I would guess that they didn’t feel they had time to turn or stall the chute by the toggles and when for the risers to dump the air and effectively crash stall the chute.

I believe they chose the path that they felt was least likely to cause injury to the crowd.

Kind of like dumping one car into the ditch to avoid a head on.

Without more video from different angles it’s impossible to say why they got to that position in the first place.

It’s a small LZ, and winds around building etc can do some weird stuff.

I’ve missed some much larger LZ’s so my point wasn’t to disparage the jumper at all.