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Tag: Formation Skydiving

  • Skydiver Dies While Attempting World Record

    A Berlin-native skydiver was killed Thursday morning in Eloy, Ariz., while attempting to break a world record with 222 fellow skydiving partners.

    Diana Paris, 46, fell to her death during a free-fall formation with the World Team group-an organization consisting of skydivers from 28 countries.

    Paris, which previously accomplished 1,500 successful jumps, reportedly died due to malfunctions with her parachute.

    Sources say that her parachute was discharged too low to the ground, preventing a safe landing.

    Eloy authorities responded to the incident at 7:42 a.m. and declared Paris dead at the scene. No other skydiver was injured during the event.

    World Team spokesman Gulcin Gilbert reassures that Paris’ death had nothing to do with the number of skydivers participating in the activity.

    “It had nothing to do with the size of the group or the aircraft,” he told The Arizona Republic. “It was a malfunction of the parachute.”

    The skydiving team’s first attempt was Wednesday when high winds prevented most of the divers from establishing a complete formation. Apparently, it was the same case on Thursday.

    In practice, skydivers are usually divided into smaller teams and then eventually perform the final formation as one big group.

    The skydivers are typically dropping at 100 mph 18,000 feet in the air-joining formation, separating, and then connecting again.

    In practice, the skydivers are divided into smaller teams and then eventually perform the final formation as one big group.

    The World Team celebrated their anniversary recently and wanted to try the double-formation to commemorate 20 years of skydiving.

    The group said that they decided to continue to jump following the death of their friend. They plan to leave a “slot open in the skydiver’s honor.”

    This is the second occasion where a skydiver has died in Eloy while attempting to break the world record.

    In December, Kieron O’Rourke, 40, of the United Kingdom and Bernd Schmehl, 51, from Germany collided and died while attempting the same record. The men were part of a separate skydiving group.

     Image via YouTube

  • Skydiver Falls to Death, Parachute Gets Entangled During Dive

    Ken Oka was a well renowned formation skydiver; the 62 year old veteran had taken part in formation skydiving for years. However, a complication during a dive lead Ken Oka to getting his chute wrapped around himself, and he wasn’t able to get untangled before plummeting to his death.

    The maneuver involved multiple divers, two of which landed safely in a Riverside County, California residential neighborhood. The two men landed in the yard of Alma Lopez, who said they were beside themselves and were immediately looking for Oka. They called 911, and began searching for their friend in the neighborhood. He was eventually found and taken to a hospital, where he later passed away.

    Oka was featured in the LA-Times years ago for his formation diving, where he explained what it’s all about, “You literally wrap your foot in your teammate’s parachute line and you try to fly this [formation] very uniformly together”

    Sgt. David Cardoza of the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department stated that the FAA would open an investigation, finding out what caused the incident.

    Oka was the second person to die in formation skydiving in the area this year, and the 18th person from the past 20 years.

    Below you can see how big skydiving formations can get, and just how precise you have to be to make sure it all goes safely.