Deland Airport Accident

[EDUC8-or]

So you will fly there with an assumption there are no such thing as night jump operations?

No, but generally the pattern in Deland isn't so busy at night and I personally can't remember the last time I heard "Jumpers Away!" after dark-thirty.

Here's a question for you jumpers out there: How much room is "enough" when diverting around an airport with skydiving ops? When you exit the jump plane, where are you in reference to the airport? Does it depend on winds, etc...? I want to be cautious and I also want to teach my students to give you guys lots of room.

 

[USMCmech]

Here's a question for you jumpers out there: How much room is "enough" when diverting around an airport with skydiving ops? When you exit the jump plane, where are you in reference to the airport? Does it depend on winds, etc...?

I always made my jump runs into the wind. I would useually open the door about .3nm from the DZ and would always have all the jumpers out befor I was 1nm upwind.


If you stay at least 3-5 nm away, you're fine in most cases.

 

[b82rez]

Deland has never been known as one of the most safety conscious places for skydiving operations. I've personally seen them jump when there was an overcast over the field, around 3 thousand overcast. Also, it seems the Otter pilots always have to "beat" the jumpers down. They are usually in such a hurry, I can easily believe they would be a danger to both jumpers and other planes....flame away.

 

[DiverDriver]

Deland has never been known as one of the most safety conscious places for skydiving operations. I've personally seen them jump when there was an overcast over the field, around 3 thousand overcast. Also, it seems the Otter pilots always have to "beat" the jumpers down. They are usually in such a hurry, I can easily believe they would be a danger to both jumpers and other planes....flame away.

Otter pilots don't have to beat the jumpers down. We do it quite naturally. The otter can descend at about 6,000 fpm. At the DZ I flew at I could carry that right down to about 600 AGL and level out, slow to flap speed, land on the numbers without ever bringing in the power and beat most of the tandems down. On very good days I would be on my takeoff roll while the last tandem was landing. That was CRANKING loads.

Like any aviation activity there must be traffic patterns established to keep dis-similar traffic apart. We don't know who was out of position on this accident but someone was.

It's a tough thing to lose a legend in the sport. Imagine if Chuck Yeager had gone in because of a midair and the other one flying the airplane was Charles Lindbergh. Get my view?

If you want to know more about flying skydivers check out www.DiverDriver.com. It is a free education website for those wanting to know more about "diver driving". It has a training syllabus outline, questionare, advice on specific aircraft, and lists most known jump plane accidents.

 

[b82rez]

Otter pilots don't have to beat the jumpers down. We do it quite naturally. The otter can descend at about 6,000 fpm. At the DZ I flew at I could carry that right down to about 600 AGL and level out, slow to flap speed, land on the numbers without ever bringing in the power and beat most of the tandems down. On very good days I would be on my takeoff roll while the last tandem was landing. That was CRANKING loads.

I appreciate your response. My one point would be that even though the otter can do that "naturally", there are many times a descent and landing like that will be hazardous to others; such as if there are other people in the pattern. At DED (at least 6 years ago which was the last time I was there), this operation would be carried out regardless of other operations. That's why I said it seems like they have to beat the jumpers down.

It is very sad that this has happened, that being said.... I have witnessed jump operations at Deland that, in my limited scope opinion, were severely not in the best interests of safety for both jumpers and aircraft. Hopefully this incident will bring attention to that and help to shift the paradigm.

 

[DiverDriver]

Oh I agree. Many times I have not raced down like I can. Yes, it is all situational.

 

[GravityHater]

The skydiver does have right of way, but skydivers should

Hey, this is not a challenge to your statement, it's just a request for more information if anyone has it... I haven't been able to find a regulation that shows this one way or the other, is there one?

Do a/c HAVE to yield to skydivers per FARs/AIM or any other legally accepted source?
Thanks

 

[GravityHater]

Here's a question for you jumpers out there: How much room is "enough" when diverting around an airport with skydiving ops? When you exit the jump plane, where are you in reference to the airport? Does it depend on winds, etc...? I want to be cautious and I also want to teach my students to give you guys lots of room.

From the Skydiver Information Manual (their Bible) -the entire thing is available online at the USPA site.
(diagram attached)


edit "You may NOT post attachments"
Well I guess you won't get to see it but it answers your question.

PM me your email address and I can send it directly.
or tell me how to post attachments to Flightinfo.com

 

[FN FAL]

What distance did they give?

On most days, the jumpers don't need more than the width of a normal traffic pattern.

Some dropzones are busy and run turbine planes continiously, ours just has two cessnas. We only need the interloping pilots to use their transponders and querry approach when they fly through. If we are climbing through 5,000 on our way to 12,000...it will be at least ten minutes before we have an exit. By all means, fly on through. It's a free country...it's not "controlled" airspace. With a little common sense and forethought, there's room for everybody out there.

But if you like to go on a cross country and not monitor ATC or Unicom or don't bother to get VFR advisories from center or approach...you might have rude awakening.

I had heard a while back, ATC was willing to consider that dropzones would become controlled airspace, but the USPA wasn't willing to back this because the controlers wanted the authority to shut down the airspace at their discretion.

I think the way things are now are fine, if everybody was alert and knew what they were doing. I wish we could work out a delio with ATC to have some controlled airspace and that we could jump through clouds as well. But I think it would be too confusing for the VFR private pilot crowd.

I believe in Austrailia, they have the controlled airspace at DZ's and they are allowed to jump through clouds...which for IFR operations wouldn't be a problem, as ATC would either tell the jump plane to not drop jumpers or they would make sure no IFR flight was vectored underneath a jump plane. There's control with those flights. The VFR guys would still be the fly in the ointment.

 

[FracCapt]

Here's a question for you jumpers out there: How much room is "enough" when diverting around an airport with skydiving ops? When you exit the jump plane, where are you in reference to the airport? Does it depend on winds, etc...? I want to be cautious and I also want to teach my students to give you guys lots of room.

It depends on the winds aloft. We are subject to the winds just as much as an airplane is, so we are pushed by the winds aloft even in freefall. If the winds are an average of 60 knots between 15,000' and 3,000', we will be pushed 1nm downwind during freefall. We have to take that into account when spotting the load(determining the exit point). We then have to account for winds from our parachute opening altitude down to the ground. Most canopies don't fly very fast - 15 to 20mph at most - so if the winds are very strong, we can be flying into a 40 knot wind and backing up at over 20 knots.

Usually, exit points will begin just prior to the airport(unless winds are strong, then usually around the middle to end of the airport), and the jumprun will last until the last jumpers are out, or until they are at a point that the jumpers wouldn't be able to make it back to the airport. Usually, all jumpers are out within 3 miles of the airport, even in the worst winds. Jumpruns are USUALLY, but not ALWAYS, flown into the wind.

There is one more thing to worry about near DZ's. At some DZ's it's commonplace, at others they never see it. It's known as CRW - Canopy Relative Work, referred to by skydivers as "Crew". This is where a group of jumpers exit at normal altitude(10,000-15,000 usually, depending on aircraft used and DZ) and deploy their parachutes immediately, then fly formations while under canopy. These canopies descend at about 1,000fpm, so you can do the math and figure out how far upwind they will exit based on the winds aloft. 30 knot winds, we will generally get out about 6 to 8 miles upwind. We tend to err on the side of caution and exit further upwind than we need to....because if it turns out we exited too far up, we can always turn and run with the wind, and give us a 45-50 knot groundspeed in a 30 knot wind.

 

[Tar Heel]

You'll have to excuse me and accept my apology, my research was at midnight after flying all day, however in response to the near hit on the rwy with the jump truck - that was with me and could be verified by Capt Nick Alleyene who now flys for Jet Blue and was the capt of that flight.

I just hate DED - too busy and too many morons coming out of RAA

Dude you are full of it. Nick is not an employee of JetBlue. He is not even a captain. He's an FO with ExpressJet and left TAB Express in February 2005. Also stop posting stuff that is flame bait. You may not like TAB. That's fine. You may not like RAA. That's cool. You are entitled to your opinions but get your facts straight and think before your write.