While making a left-hand landing pattern, Brian collides with another jumper who made an “S-turn” on her final approach. The end result is a very scary canopy collision, and her canopy (turquoise/green) fully collapsed at 100 feet, only partially re-inflating before impact. She was taken to the hospital and treated for a broken leg — luckily it didn’t turn out worse, because a canopy collision at that altitude can be deadly.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to fly a predictable landing pattern, stay alert and to keep your head on a swivel, but there are also other factors to consider that may lead up to an incident like this…

We try our best to create proper horizontal and vertical separation between groups when exiting the plane and at break-off, but once we’re under canopy there are choices we make that can either increase or decrease the separation we’ve created for safety during the skydive. If we all try to land in the same spot, or land close to the hangar because we don’t want to walk far, or spiral to get down faster, or don’t want to get our feet wet in the puddles or pond, then you might find yourself in a situation like this. There’s LOTS of space in the sky and in the landing area (usually), so use it to your advantage for safe landings.