Rare Death Under Investigation

A strange and tragic accident happened at AerOhio Skydiving School in Sterling, OH according to news stories Sunday. A tandem dive student fell free of her instructor and plunged to her death.

Preliminary reports said that 44-year-old Ellen McWilliams "slipped free of her harness" -- an accident of extreme rarity and improbability. The tandem instructor with whom she jumped has not been identified.

In tandem skydiving, a novice student is harnessed to an experienced instructor. During freefall, a drogue stabilizes the pair and allows the instructor to teach the student how to maintain stability and control and to maneuver in freefall. After the instructor opens the chute, he or she steers the canopy to the ground and instructor and student land together. The student has no independent chute, although the instructor has a reserve parachute in case of main chute malfunction.

Tandem skydives are also a popular way for non-skydivers to experience the sport, either to see if they want to take it up seriously, or just as a one-off thrill. AerOhio takes tandem students up on a walk-in basis on weekends during the season, and on weekdays just requires a call ahead to the company's 800 number.

A tandem skydive at the center usually costs $239, but AerOhio was running a $40-off special for Memorial Day Weekend. The center, owned by Sherry and Tim Butcher, also offers Accelerated Free Fall instruction and has quite a large staff. The center has a good reputation in the tight-knit skydiving community. Indeed, they have never had a student jumper seriously injured before. Tandem jumps have been particularly safe.

"In our entire history of doing tandem skydiving, only two injuries have ever occurred. Both were broken ankles of the hairline fracture variety," the drop zone's promotional material says. "These numbers sound even better when you find out that we have done over 10,000 tandem training jumps since 1997." But parachuting is an inherently hazardous activity, that only  has been tamed by decades of hard work by safety-focused people.

The company's website includes a frank acknowledgment of this risk. "With all of that said, please understand that no one anywhere, can ever guarantee perfect safety because this is still skydiving that we are talking about, and there are rare moments when even if you do everything right, a person can still be injured or die."

The accident remains under investigation by the local Sheriff and will also be investigated by the US Parachute Association. AerOhio is a USPA member center.

While skydiving accidents are unfortunately not rare, tandem jump fatalities definitely are. A number of jumpers reached Monday could not recall another incident of an able-bodied tandem student falling out of his or her harness, although it has happened with a paraplegic student before. (Tandem instructors now take special measures with paralyzed students, whose limbs can flex in ways that harness designers didn't anticipate, and who can't use their muscles to put the limbs back in position).

In the interests of safety, we recommend that all jumpers and instructors review this page from Sport Parachutist's Safety Journal that addresses the question: "Can you fall out of a properly fastened harness?"

Aero-News extends our condolences to the owners and staff of AerOhio, to the tandem instructor involved, and of course to the family and friends of the late Ms McWilliams.

FMI: www.uspa.org