SKYDIVING TERROR

When skydiving instructor Sheldon McFarlane checked trainee jumper Christopher Jones’s logbook, he thought the 22-year-old’s first solo jump would be routine. Nothing prepared him for what unfolded in the skies over Western Australia, on a warm November a

That day I arrived at Perth’s Jandakot Airport at 7.30am, as I do every morning. I’d been really busy doing tandem jumps – where the student is attached to me with a harness – as well as teaching students to jump by themselves. There were probably about 40 trainee jumpers out there that day so I hadn’t taken much notice of Christopher Jones. Another instructor had jumped with him up to this stage and this was my first jump with him.

Christopher was lucky to have the opportunity to do three jumps in one day. Students can get stressed when there are long gaps between their jumps. Sometimes they are more nervous on their second jump than their first. I reckon the more jumps you do in a day the easier it is – it boosts your confidence and you can build on what you learnt that day.

I was born in Zimbabwe and grew up in Namibia. My parents belonged to a flying club and one of my dad’s best friends was a skydiving instructor. Throughout my childhood, if I wasn’t out flying with the older guys I was helping pack parachutes and watching them jump. I started begging to jump from the age of five and I did my first parachute jump at 15.

I have been skydiving for 25 years and I still love it. It’s a very dynamic sport and there are a lot of challenges. I still learn something new every day.

Christopher was going to do his fifth jump [of the Accelerated Freefall training programme] with me. According to his logbook, he’d done really well up to this point. With each jump you learn something new and then consolidate what you mastered in the last jump. The fifth is the first solo jump. He had to show he could turn and do a forwards movement. The instructor just follows the student and signals, using hand movements to tell them what to do – like tapping your wrist to tell them to look at their altimeter. We film everything [using a helmet camera] so they can get a sense of where they went wrong, and after we get on the ground we debrief them. It was mid-afternoon and the weather was clear with light winds, perfect for skydiving. This is going to be easy, I thought to myself.

Christopher climbed out of the plane fine and did a reasonable exit. Then he

THE WEATHER WAS PERFECT FOR SKYDIVING. THIS IS GOING TO BE EASY,

I THOUGHT

over-rotated and became unstable for a second, but he quickly flipped himself back into the stable position again, which was really well done. Then when he was stable and level, he turned himself so he was facing me and waited for my signals. He started a left-hand turn – and then he suddenly stopped.

What are you doing? I wondered. We were 9000 feet* above the ground. Christopher’s shoulders rolled forwards and his knees came up, then he flipped onto his back. Sometimes you see students suffer from sensory overload – the moment has got too much for them. Sometimes you see them spinning or flipping upside down. Maybe, I thought, he’s misunderstood the technique for doing turns?

I didn’t know what he was up to. It never entered my head that he might have been having a seizure.

“Come on, Christopher, right yourself, right yourself,” I muttered. I was waiting for him to flip himself back over onto his front. But he wasn’t doing anything to correct his situation.

For the next 30 seconds or so, Christopher, was free-falling at speeds up to 200 km an hour.

I dived down but I was descending too fast. I was worried about coming in over the top of him, as he might have pulled the rip cord and then I would be falling into an open parachute. So