Photo by Dennis Sattler.

Learning from your own mistakes is a necessity in skydiving, but too often, jumpers miss out on the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others. This is a sport built on preparation, discipline and constant learning. And while it’s not realistic to assume you will achieve perfection, it’s always something you should chase—by choosing to learn, adapt and take every opportunity to improve.

Sharing stories and debriefing honestly helps to create an environment where lessons can be learned before they spiral into further incidents. As we approach the 30th annual USPA Safety Day, it’s important to remember that nobody is immune to error—not even the most accomplished skydivers in the world.

Here, some of the biggest advocates for safety in the sport share stories about mistakes they’ve made. By looking at their close calls, as well as the lessons they learned from them, jumpers can better understand the importance of their own preparation and awareness, and realize the dangerous power of a momentary lapse in judgment.

Headshots:
Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld by Norman Kent
Jeff Provenzano by Othar Lawrence
Jim Crouch by Adam Fischer

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I’ve been on, literally, hundreds of 100-plus-way formation skydives. But I’ve only been in one canopy collision.

At the time, I was sure I was a competent, squared-away, safe skydiver—and I had the resume to back it up. I had over 3,000 jumps, was an AFF, tandem and static-line instructor, pilot, rigger, DZO and Nationals medalist. And, by the way, the collision wasn’t on a 100-way; it was after a jump from a C-182 with a total of four canopies in the sky.

I could’ve sworn the canopy came out of nowhere. But we hit head-on, so it had to have been right in front of me for at least enough to see it and turn away. Neither one of us was hurt badly, but only out of pure luck.

I was lying in bed that night trying to figure out how the hell that happened. There was only one answer:  I clearly had my head up my ass. Had I been looking even a little for other canopies, I could have easily avoided it. And if I was capable of being that complacent, what else was I missing? Was I that unaware in freefall and at breakoff? Probably. Was I ready for any and all malfunctions? Probably not. My experience had lulled me into a false sense of security.

That was my chance to change my ways and never be that complacent again. And I remind myself of it every day and every jump.

Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld
World-champion formation skydiver and drop zone manager

This was a time I landed under a reserve canopy, uninjured, and walked away. But there was nothing casual about it. When I’d finally gotten a good reserve over my head at about 150 feet, it was a slap in the face. Not panic—clarity. One thought cut through everything else: “How did I let it get this close?”

What bothered me most was that nothing “major” went wrong on the skydive. There wasn’t a single reckless decision, no obvious violation, no dramatic failure point I could point to and say, "That was it." Looking back, it was a collection of small decisions—each one seemingly reasonable on its own—that quietly eroded my margin of error from start to finish.

It began at breakoff. The plan was a standard five-second track. I tracked for about 10. In my mind, it felt safer. More separation, more room. I justified it easily, even though “plan the dive, dive the plan” is something I’ve taught for years. That choice cost time.

Under the canopy, expectation bias took over. The canopy opened and started turning into line twists. I recognized what was happening immediately—but I kicked the wrong way. Not because I didn’t know better, but because I kicked the way it usually went. Muscle memory replaced verification. Instead of stopping to confirm the direction, I reacted automatically, making it worse. More time gone.

When I decided to cut away, another subtle degradation showed up. I had thousands of sport jumps and several clean cutaways, but my recent practice had been dominated by tandem emergency procedures. Under stress, I reached for the reserve handle where it lives on a tandem rig—not where it belongs on my sport rig. I corrected it, but that correction took time. By the time the reserve inflated, I had almost no time left.

Any one of those decisions by itself wouldn’t have raised alarms. I probably wouldn’t have noticed a single one in isolation. But together, they formed the perfect chain to consume as much margin as possible without a fatal outcome. That’s what complacency does. It doesn’t crash into your routine and announce itself. It seeps in through familiarity, through confidence earned honestly over time, until the standard quietly drifts.

The lesson wasn’t that I survived. The lesson was how close I came—without ever feeling like I was doing something “wrong.”

Ron Bell
USPA Director of Safety and Training

After tens of thousands of jumps, it’s easy to believe you’re immune to simple mistakes. About ten years ago, I was walking to the airplane when a friend of mine—a relatively new jumper with around 200 jumps—insisted on giving me a pin check. At that point in my career, I rarely checked my reserve pin myself. I’d grab my rig, throw it on, see that the flaps were closed, and move on. Nothing had ever been wrong before, so complacency quietly set in.

When I agreed and took my rig off, we saw it immediately. My reserve pin was hanging on by a fraction of a millimeter. The loop was nearly off the pin, and the pin was essentially one movement away from being pulled. I still don’t know how the reserve didn’t fire when I put the rig on. An unintentional reserve deployment could have led to countless bad outcomes.

That moment was a hard reset. One of the first systems we learn as students is gear checks, yet somewhere along the way, experience replaced discipline. The lesson was simple and humbling: No one is above the basics. Complacency doesn’t care how many jumps you have. Systems, routines and checklists only work if you follow them every time.

Thanks, Dave Gibbs, for insisting on that pin check. It’s a reminder I carry on every jump.

Jeff Provenzano
Red Bull Air Force member and canopy-piloting champion

It was the mid-’90s, and I was a relatively new tandem instructor with probably fewer than 100 tandem jumps under my belt. I was doing back-to-back tandem jumps, so after landing from my first one, I quickly put on another tandem rig and took my student to the airplane. The exit and freefall were uneventful, but when I opened the main parachute, I found myself hanging about a foot low on my tandem student, staring at the center of her back!

When I put the tandem rig on in a hurry to get to the waiting airplane, I had decided to wait and tighten the leg straps once I was in the airplane, to save time. There was just one problem—I forgot to tighten the leg straps! This left me hanging quite low below my student. But I was able to shift my weight and get the leg straps tightened enough that I could reach the toggles, release the brakes and land uneventfully.

That tandem jump was a sharp wake-up call for me. What if I had decided not to even put my legs through the leg straps? It would have been my last skydive. I would have left my student alone under the parachute.

From that moment on, I never approached an airplane until I had completely adjusted the harness and conducted a full check of the entire rig, all handles, both leg straps and the chest strap. Usually multiple checks. Although I already knew it, that jump solidified with me the fact that every skydive must be conducted to the highest level of attention and safety—especially on tandem skydives. Following that jump, I had an uneventful 23 years as a tandem instructor and tandem examiner before retiring from skydiving.

Jim Crouch
Former USPA Director of Safety and Training