A 24-year-old woman skydiver from Bangalore died when her parachute failed to open properly after she dived from an airplane during a skydiving sessions at an unused airport at nearby Kamalapuram yesterday.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/south/woman-dies-in-tamil-nadu-after-parachute-doesn-t-open-in-skydiving-lesson-477428

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/383615/woman-skydiver-bangalore-dies-chute.html

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Skydiving-Bangalore-woman-dies-in-Tamil-Nadu-as-parachute-fails-to-open/articleshow/29607192.cms

Weird, I used to think there are two parachutes, in case one fails.

Yep.


from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parachuting#Safety

Yes, there are 2 parachutes if one failed there is backup one, this is what I was teached during my session in NZ

Well this is India

True, extra precautions and information of vendor needs to be checked for adventure sports in India, frankly speaking I won't dare any such here....few months ago similar had happened on hot air balloon too some kind of explosion..

@ghostrider   

agreed

we are so quick at judging people and situation and pass judgement . well then let me educate you all.

(a) Anywhere in the world sports parachute container has two parachutes, main and reserve

(b) after freefall at the stipulated height if you dont pull the main chute handle (called hacky) emergency chute is released automatically by a mechanism called AAD (Please google)

(c) in her case, though details are not known, what i suspect is she pulled while in an unstable flight. If you pull in an unstable body position there is good chance that you body will get entangled with the opening parachute. if that happens you follow emergency procedure of cut away the main and deploy the reserve(Even if you dont reserve will deploy automatically through something called the RSL or AAD)

(d) Please refrain from saying this is India etc, since our sky diving scene is in the nascent stage most of our equipment is new unlike abroad.

(e) You want to know how many died in so called developed nations last year alone ? 47 (See image)

(f) all you India bashers, to the best of my knowledge, this is the first in India (Discounting combat fatalities in the military)

PS
i have had a bad spin when executing a front loop, barrel roll combo. but one needs to remember that one shouldn't panic. keep calm head, take specified emergency action (See image of for my spin & recovery). like gabbar says "jo dar gaya ! woh mar gaya"

PPS

Blue SKies V Ramya !! Fly away !! Free

Gusty sir, I am 200% with you on that. Accidents/frauds/rapes/crimes happen everywhere, New York, Paris, Zurich...If something's not right in our country, we bear the responsibility of fixing it; not the Ams or the Japs or the Brits. It has to start within.

Feel good to know gents like yourself who reiterate to the next generation the intent for "I care for India" is the need of the hour more than "I love my India" which is limited to a Bollywood song played on national holidays.

Hope some lessons are learnt from an investigation.

And I think your message "jo darr gaya, woh mar gaya" is equally applicable to the mammoth task ahead of us, changing the India bashing perspective.

I think it does,

Druva & Moorthy (all and sundry) no offence, i keep saying this, which family is perfect? we have to strive to make it happy, similarly our country is one big family, we need to be proud of it, and strive to make it good, starting with ourselves

Gusty Sir,
well I do not have anything to add you other than one simple fact... a friend of mine... Late Sai died in a similar mishap sometime in 1994 - 95.  He was the previous year's champion at the National SkyDiving Championships.... and this final time they got entangled together while doing a competition Relative Canopy Work routine at the National Sky Diving Championship.  He tried to release his main Chute and deploy the reserve but he was just too badly entangled in the other guy's Chute... Others survived to tell the tale but he was not so lucky.  This was at Chandigarh.  Despite good training and equipment... these are things which just happen at the moment....  well... they went away doing what they liked.....

May her soul Rest In Peace 

was he helicopter pilot ? i know of a Flight Lieutenant who was entangled and lost his life.

Yes he was a real good one... and a highly respected one.   As bachelors we shared a room together in Udhampur and at the time of the accident he was at NDA

I am discounting those in the military, i lost one guy on my stick, night dive, candling !! back in the early nighties

ok..... THIS WAS NATIONAL SKY DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS even civilian sky divers taking part...

Gusty Sir, just wanted to understand, the reserve chute opens automatically rite once it reaches certain altitude....as per today article in paper in this incident she was asked to open emergency chute...or is that it both ways in case of issues..

That's not what i heard, what i heard is that para wrapped around her ?

having said that let me explain how AAD (automatic activation device (there are two of them in the market, called Cypres & Vigil) works. Depending on your rate of descend when you cross a certain altitude. With that specified  rate of descend (which is different for student & expert). it fires (It is a Electro-pryo device) and the reserve opens.

problem is when you are in a awkward position, rate of descent is not high enough for the reserve to open and main chute is awkwardly around your body. in her case, if you see the first video, body is intact, which means the fall hasn't been at the terminal velocity (at terminal velocity, on impact, body more or less disintegrates).

Only disclaimer is the truth is yet to be known. these are my prelim observations