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Date: Fri, 08 Apr 2011 15:54:11 -0400
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From: mmcmanus@grandecom.net
Subject: Re: [LML] The amazing survivability of aircraft (sometimes!)
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It's amazing what the human body can do to an airplane.  As a regular  
weekend "meat bomber" I've seen some ugly things from skydiver strikes  
on 182s, 206s, twin otters, caravans, and others.  We were doing night  
jumps over Ft Bragg years ago from a Helio Courier.  Something came  
lose in the tail (it wasn't a human that hit it in this case), but the  
pilot landed the crippled plane with the horizontal tail barely  
hanging on.  He had a parachute on, but since it was night, he  
couldn't see the tail to know how bad it was.  If he could of, he said  
he would have jumped.

Matt McManus


Quoting Ross Leighton <rossl@mweb.co.za>:

> I came across this Cessna 206 at Cape Town international airport today. It
> is used for parachutist transport (or meat bombing as we call it locally).
> Yesterday a parachutist deploying at FL090 suffered a premature deployment
> of his chute whilst still in the doorway of the aircraft. The chute caught
> in the wind, pulled him into the right hand horizontal stabilizer. The
> result is as you see in the photo. Parachutist survived with back injuries
> and the pilot managed to fly a controlled crash approach down to the runway
> of the airport. Best glide apparently was 130KIAS below which aircraft
> wanted to fall out of the sky. The plane was losing 1000fpm on the descent.
> Other than a hard landing with attendant prop strike, the aircraft survived.
> So did the pilot who clearly is made of the right stuff. Apparently it used
> to be SOP that pilots of jump planes wore chutes but it fell by the wayside
> over the years. Guess that will be revisited now.
>
> But just goes to show how resilient aircraft are sometimes.
>
>
> Ross Leighton
> Cygnet Capital
> Cape Town, South Africa
> Cell: 082 881 3183
>
>