A novice skydiver yesterday described how he survived a plunge of thousands of feet after the instructor he was strapped to suffered a fatal heart attack in mid-air.

The US soldier Daniel Pharr was tied to skydiving veteran George Steele when the instructor stopped talking as the pair hurtled towards the ground over Chester County in South Carolina.

The pair had jumped from 13,500 ft (4,100 metres) with the novice strapped to his instructor's front.

The jump was a Christmas gift from Pharr's girlfriend and the soldier says he used military training and what he could remember about skydiving from television to figure out what to do.

The parachute had already been deployed, meaning Pharr had to use its toggles to steer the pair away from houses and other perils.

Pharr grabbed the right toggle handle and pulled to avoid a house and tugged again to miss some trees, landing safely in a field about a third of a mile from their intended landing spot.

Pharr, 25, said he wrestled out of the harness binding him to his instructor, and started emergency treatment to try to save him. Steele is thought to have suffered a heart attack and died later.

Other instructors at the skydiving school told Pharr if he had pulled the toggle too hard, the chute would have spun out of control, and he would have also died.

"They told me afterward that it was amazing that I knew to do that. This is my survival instinct at that point. I just kind of did what I had to do," said Pharr.

Steele, 49, was a veteran of 8,000 parachute jumps and the pair were the last of about 10 skydivers to jump out of the plane. Pharr enjoyed a minute of free fall as the cold air rushed by.

"He pulled the chute," Pharr said. "It got super quiet. It's eerily quiet up there. I made the comment to him: 'It's surprising how quiet it is.' And he's like: 'Welcome to my world.'"

A few seconds passed, and Pharr asked his instructor another question. This time, Steele didn't answer. Pharr repeated his question. No answer.

"And then I just looked up at him and he looked like he was conscious, but just talking to him, I realised something was wrong," Pharr said. "So at that point I realised I was just going to have to do what I had to do to get down to the ground and try to help him."

Pharr's mother said she heard a radio message that a pair of skydivers were potentially in trouble. "It was an eternity," Darlene Huggins said, when asked how long it took her to hear her son's message that he was safe. "No, really, it could have been 10, 15 minutes."

Pharr wants to jump again, but it looks like his first skydive will be his last. "My family has told me I have to keep my feet on the ground," he said.