Skydiving plane down in Oceanside (again)

Pretty unbelievable, but not really. Was going to head over but will probably head to CRQ for the afternoon instead.

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Rgbeard said:
Having been exposed to a lot of these jump operations, I am really surprised there’s not more incidents.
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We've had a couple of different jump operators at our airport (none presently) and another nearby. Seeing some of the jump plane pilots and their antics along with the some of the skydivers being more than a little "off the chain" I was quite surprised at what they could get away with.

They did put a nice Porter PC-6 on it's nose in the middle of the runway one day. I understand they were breaking in a new pilot and he stood on the brakes during the landing. The amazing part was he had 2000' of runway in front of him. Cost them a prop strike/engine teardown.

Anthother time they put a King Air in the woods because they ran it out of fuel (reportedly at 12k) and was unsuccessful in a dead stick attempt at the runway.
 
Rgbeard said:
Having been exposed to a lot of these jump operations, I am really surprised there’s not more incidents.
Click to expand...
Yep. I've watched, and declined a free jump; they just hammer people in, dump 'em, pick up another load, over and over, at least on the day that I watched.
 
I’m curious what some of the observations of unsafe conditions or actions on the avaition side were? I don’t know much about the skydiving business and just interested.
 
On one occasion I watched the jump plane lift off the runway and immediately bank between two rows of hangars. Scared the daylights out of me. A fellow pilot sitting in the hangar with me literally climbed over me and the chair I was sitting in trying to get away from the door thinking that the plane was going to hit the hangar ... it was seriously that close.

I've had them cut me off on base leg and tell me later that it was because they needed to get down as they were using much more fuel than I was.
 
Rgbeard said:
Having been exposed to a lot of these jump operations, I am really surprised there’s not more incidents.
Click to expand...

Having been exposed to a few drop zones, and having jumped a fair share, places I went to didn’t have these problems. Expose yourself to better DZs?
 
Kenny Phillips said:
Yep. I've watched, and declined a free jump; they just hammer people in, dump 'em, pick up another load, over and over, at least on the day that I watched.
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My wife and I and a bunch of my coworkers all jumped tandem back in 1998 out of what turned out to be a rinky operation in Missouri. My dad always said only an idiot jumps out of a perfectly good airplane, but my theory was hey, these people don't want to die any more than I do, so it's all good. I was wrong. The flip-flops-wearing acid casualty running the operation should have been my first clue for a hard pass. The fact that the chutes were packed by local volunteers should have been my second. The fact that the pilot hot-lapping the rickety-ass Cessna 206 was wearing a parachute himself should have been my third. The fact that I never saw the pioot do a walk-around should have sealed it. But I was committed. We were all wearing altimeters, and I was paying close attention to mine, feeling better and better as we approached safe bail-out altitude.

Just a few weeks later, that same plane threw two rods on climbout and caught fire well below bail-out altitude. They were all forced to ride it down to a failed landing. My instructor, my wife's instructor, the pilot, and a young woman on her first ever jump were all killed. I've never shaken the feeling that we really dodged a bullet on our jump.
 
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