Any Skydivers Here?

[Capebuffalo]

Lodi, CA — A Manteca man is lucky to be alive after surviving what aviation experts are calling both a miracle and a freak accident. An expert skydiver, Kent Clostomy, has made over 3000 jumps from his home base of Lodi, CA. Mr. Clostomy is the co-owner of the mal-named skydiving company Deep Impact and decided to make a high jump from close to 20,000 feet over the California Central Valley.

“Kent is the best there is,” said his partner at Deep Impact Carol Dons, also an expert skydiver and the company’s lead instructor. “So when he came in and told me he was going to make what we call a big jump, I didn’t think much about. I was kinda jealous, to be honest.”

The jump started like any other. Mr. Clostomy boarded his company’s twin-engine Cessna “Old Betsky” piloted by long-time Deep Impact employee Steven “Mad Dog” Snarls. The pair boarded aircraft at 9:07 am and proceeded to ascend to the drop altitude.

“Kent is a daredevil, there’s no doubt about that,” said Mr. Snarls. “He wanted me to take it even higher than 20K, but I told him, like I always do, that the FAA will be on our ass if we screw around like that. So I lifted him to 19,256 feet, and he jumped. And I saw the whole damn thing happen.”

Interception

Little did either man know that approximately 42 miles away, United Airlines flight 420 had just left San Francisco International Airport on its way towards Salt Lake City. The airplane was climbing to 13,000 feet when the Boeing 737-800 had an unplanned rendezvous with Mr. Clostomy, who was busy screaming his favorite Van Halen song and failed to notice the airplane approaching him at over 300mph to the west.




“Every time I jump, I put on Hot For Teacher, and then if I have time, I might switch to some ‘Zeppelin,” said an overly tanned and highly enthusiastic Kent recalling his jump. “So I was up there, doing my air drum thing, then wham. The next thing I know, my rig is caught up in the nose of this plane. And I couldn’t get myself free.”

According to pilot Snarls, he was circling back to the Lodi airfield when he says Kent got “snatched up.”

“You have to understand these jets are going fast, and it just came out of nowhere. It just hooked him like a bass in the Delta and poof, and he was gone. I radioed down to Carol, but she thought I was joking. Eventually, she figured it out and got on the horn with the FAA or whatever.”

“Whatever, Brah”

Recalling his ordeal, Mr. Clostomy seemed unaffected by his unexpected hitchhike on a 737.

“It took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on,” continued Mr. Clostomy. “I’m not too sure, but it was a minute or so. I was caught up underneath the fuselage, you know? I mean, going that fast meant I was pinned up under the plane. I tried banging on the plane. Nothing worked. Finally, I cut myself free and started falling.”




It was at that point that Kent was somewhere over Eastern Nevada, near Elko, at approximately 25,000 feet.

“It was a bit disorienting at first, but I cured that by cranking up my Van Halen. The reserve [parachute] opened around 8,000 feet, and I coasted into Round Table [Pizza] parking lot out there in Elko. Here’s the thing. No one even noticed. So, I just took off my gear and went in and had a pepperoni pizza and a coke.”

After finishing up his pizza, Mr. Clostomy called Carol and told her he was okay. According to the Deep Impact team, Flight 420 had no idea that they had an additional, unticketed passenger until they arrived in Salt Lake City. The FAA is reviewing its flight plans for the aircraft in the area and is considering limiting skydiving until a new policy is in place.

[i_SLAM_cougars]

This dude definitely sounds like someone I could get along with. What a wild ride.

[Capebuffalo]

DB Cooper hasn’t got shit on this guy.

[kelkel]

DB Cooper hasn’t got shit on this guy.

The youngsters here will be googling that name....

[Proximal]

The youngsters here will be googling that name....

I recall a moronic movie called “Without a Paddle” in which 3 knucklehead friends seek out his stash. In the “right” mood, it wasn’t all that bad.

[Honkey_Kong]

[XnavyHMCS]

The youngsters here will be googling that name....

That's a no-shitter...

[Capebuffalo]

I’ve jumped twice(not tandem) from about 15,000 ft. I can’t imagine not seeing a 737 coming at you. Or the pilot not seeing the full canopy in front of him. Had to be a scary situation.

[i_SLAM_cougars]

I’ve jumped twice(not tandem) from about 15,000 ft. I can’t imagine not seeing a 737 coming at you. Or the pilot not seeing the full canopy in front of him. Had to be a scary situation.

I was thinking that too, but they said it was going about 300mph. The fastest I’ve ever gone on anything is about 180 on a crotch rocket. That’s roughly half the speed of that plane, and things are coming at you FAST. I’m not sure how fast the diver was falling either. So I can see the blind luck factor of two very fast objects moving towards each other from different directions at break neck speed. He’s lucky he didn’t get smeared on the nose of that plane or sucked into the engine.

[Beetlegeuse]

I posted a better-crafted version of this last night but the post seems to have ... vanished.

First of all, as a pilot and former skydiver, I find it hard to believe you could ever talk a pilot into a scheme like this because it would cost him his ticket if he were caught. No matter where you are, there's a certain altitude above which you can't allow skydivers to jump without being in contact with ATC. And you can't fly above 14,000 feet MSL for even one second without either a pressurized cockpit or using supplemental oxygen. I skydived back when I was in college, which was an era when there was essentially no regulation on the sport, plus the airport we were jumping from was in Eastern Bumfuck and close to 100 miles from anything resembling civilization, and all the guys (and girls) I jumped with were borned risk-takers. Most of them also were pot-smokers, and it was quite normal for some of them to jump stoned. We all of us were endlessly trying to talk our jump pilots into some hare-brained scheme .. and they always refused. Always.

If the pilot is being paid, even if only enough to cover the cost of fuel, he has to be commercial-rated. Virtually all pilots -- and especially those who have invested the time and money to earn a commercial rating (or higher) -- place a value on their license that makes it worth whatever damage would be sustained to any "friendship" by refusing to support any hijinx that might put their ticket at risk.

Second, skydivers don't as a rule open their canopy "at altitude." The thrill is in the freefall, not in the parachute ride that follows, so they'll generally wait until they're below ~2000 feet AGL to deploy the canopy. And there's zero chances of being snagged by an airliner at that altitude unless you're jumping on the final approach path of an airport.

Third, the fizziks don't work. There's no 'elasticity' in the canopy, shroud lines or the harness. Nothing to lessen the impact transmitted to the skydiver. Ever see somebody who'd been in a car wreck (at far less than 300 mph) and was bruised by the "impact" with the safety belts? Skydivers will sometimes suffer bruising from the impact of the harness at 'normal' opening shock. At 300 mph, the harness would've dismembered the skydiver like a ginsu knife.

Then there's the question of dying from hypothermia and/or hypoxia at 25,000 feet. Yes, I know men survive at much higher when they climb in the Himalayas, but they yo-yo to acclimatize, first climbing up high to trigger the growth of additional red blood cells, then climbing back down so as not spend too much time in "the Death Zone." In the case of suddenly (seconds or minutes) finding yourself at a pressure altitude of 25,000 feet, the US Air Force reckons that time of useful consciousness is 3-5 minutes (I know this because I've taken hypoxia training in a military altitude chamber at least half a dozen times). Now factor in the effect of altitude on temperature. A typical adiabatic lapse rate is ~2.5°F per each 1000 feet of altitude. Presuming he took off from an airfield at an elevation of 1000 feet with a field temperature of 80°F, at FL250 the temperature figures to be about 20°F. So what's the wind chill at 20°F and 300 mph? And if you pass out under those conditions, even if the air gets warmer/thicker in just a few minutes, will you wake up?

And I know of no reason to believe that a skydiver dangling off the nose of a commercial airliner at 300 mph will ever manage to achieve an aerodynamically stable configuration. Which is an important consideration because if he doesn't he'll be getting slapped around like a rag doll, repeatedly being slammed against the fuselage for the entire remainder of the flight. Go to your local municipal airport some time and ask to have a look at one of their rental airplanes. Check out the fuselage behind the lower rear corner of the cabin doors. Chances are you'll see a bunch of shallow linear dents about 3" long in the skin. They're from student pilots and other low-timers forgetting to do up their seat belts and leaving the buckle hanging outside the threshold of the door when they take off. And since the buckle isn't aerodynamically stable, it gets dashed around in the slipstream, bouncing off the fuselage time and time again.

But even if you find a pilot that stupid, even if you survive the G forces, even if you don't succumb to hypoxia/hypothermia, even if you don't get beat to death against the fuselage in flight, you've still got to survive the landing. Because a 737 touches down at about 160 mph. Since the parachute is just dangling on the nose of the a/c, there's a possibility that owing to his momentum, combined with the pilot applying a large amount of reverse thrust, the skydiver might find himself being flung clear of the a/c and bouncing down the runway (still @160 mph). And if he's not flung clear, he'll be being dragged down the tarmac at well more than 100 fps for the half mile to a mile that it will take the pilot to slow to a speed suitable for turning off onto a taxiway, probably tumbling and/or bouncing as he goes.

Aviation has more than its share of smart-asses (this post is testament to the truth of that) so you're not likely to land at a commercial airfield and taxi clear of the active without some wiseacre pilot getting on the ground control frequency and asking, "Dude, are you aware you've got a skydiver hanging off the nose of your a/c?" At which point the pilot will stop and call ground control to ask them to send out a firetruck. And if the skydiver is lucky beyond all reason, he might still be alive.

But my money's on not.

[Capebuffalo]

[Test Monsterone]

This sounds like "fake news." The jerk of going 0-300 mph all of a sudden would break a person's spine, and then he would hit the fuselage... and to be at that altitude for that long, he would be an icicle. I don't believe any of it.

[Beetlegeuse]

There have been several documented instances of a skydiver getting snagged on the plane they were jumping from ... and living. But the acceleration would have been pretty mild because until they jumped out they were traveling the same speed as the airplane.

The vertical speed of a skydiver under canopy is about 10 mph so you might as well call him stationary in comparison to the 300 mph airplane. So he goes from essentially zero to 300 in the length of time it takes him to get pulled up to and in line with the airplane's path of flight. 300 mph is 440 fps and I'm guessing his canopy from the bridle cord to the capewells probably was 30-ish feet. So from the time the nose of the plane has snagged is canopy, that would happen in the length of time the plane took to travel maybe twice that distance, 60 feet. Even if you call it 90 feet, that takes place in roughly two-tenths of a second. Top fuel drag racers suffer detached retinas accelerating from zero to 300 in three seconds. This is 15 times that much acceleration. Somewhere around 150 positive Gs experienced through the (vertical) Y-axis. We normally experience gravity as positive Gs through the Y axis so that's the force we're built to best endure but I don't think this is survivable. I've seen references to an NHTSA statistic that severe injury or death is a certainty at 75 Gs but I can't find the source for that at the NHTSA itself. My hunch is that this much force would extrude the skydiver's torso through the leg holes in his harness. But there would be several unsurvivable injuries from pulling that many Gs, including multiple internal organs "breaking loose from their moorings," probably a broken or neck (or dislocated vertebra) from the rapid change in head attitude (whiplash), and being squeezed through the leg holes would sever both femoral arteries.

And by the way, I don't know this shit because I'm smart, I just happen to be older than dirt. And I've lived an eventful enough of a life that I've come across situations where it was in my best interest to learn a thing or three about these very topics.

[balance]

Sorry but I don’t buy this story at all.
I will say though this reminds me of
“Lawn chair Larry” was an interesting event that actually did happen.


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