Dramatic footage released by Australian authorities showed the moment a skydiver was left dangling thousands of metres in the air after their parachute caught on the plane’s tail.<\/p>\n
The skydiver survived the incident, which occurred south of Cairns during a stunt in September but has only just been revealed following investigations by the transport safety watchdog.<\/p>\n
Plans for a 16-way formation by parachutists at 4,600 metres, filmed by a parachuting camera operator, hit chaos within seconds of the first participant reaching the plane’s exit.<\/p>\n
A video released by the Australian Transport Safety Bureau showed the participant’s reserve parachute being activated after its handle snagged the wing flap of the plane.<\/p>\n
The jumper was flung backwards – their legs striking the aircraft – as the orange reserve parachute wrapped itself around the plane’s tail.<\/p>\n
The parachuter also knocked the camera operator, who was straddling the side of the aircraft and preparing to jump, into freefall, the bureau said in a report that did not include names, ages, or genders.<\/p>\n
The jumper was seen placing their hands on their helmet for a few seconds, as if in shock.<\/p>\n
While dangling over the terrifying drop, the jumper cut the strings of the reserve chute with a hook knife and freed themself, the bureau said.<\/p>\n
The parachuter then deployed their main chute and landed safely on the ground.<\/p>\n
“Carrying a hook knife – although it is not a regulatory requirement – could be lifesaving in the event of a premature reserve parachute deployment,” said the bureau’s chief commissioner Angus Mitchell.<\/p>\n
The aircraft’s tail was “substantially damaged” by the incident and the pilot had limited control of the plane, issuing a mayday distress call, but managed to safely land the plane.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dramatic footage released by Australian authorities showed the moment a skydiver was left dangling thousands of metres in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-186457","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}