Emergency Casa Landing

Andrew's summary of the skydiving
weekend: "On second thought, let's *not* go
jumping *last* weekend...I have a bad
feeling."

Well put Andrew. Well put.

The weekend began in Thomaston, Georgia at
Skydive Atlanta. The "Freaks Flock
Together" boogie was happening. I got three
jumps in, but after one engine started to
overheat on the ground, we went to Skydive
Monroe on Sunday. They had a plane called a
Casa at the dropzone. It's got a huge
hinged door that opens out of the back and
is mucho funo to jump.

I arrived at Skydive Monroe for load number
four of the day. Andrew, Emelie, Dennis and
a number of other Skydive Atlanta jumpers
had already made a jump. We boarded the
plane and began planning our jump... a jump
that we still need to make, by the way.

As we were accelerating for takeoff I heard
a pop behind me. It was a metallic pop and
sounded like an aluminum bar had snapped.
With all of the other noise in the aircraft
I thought little of it. Skydiving planes
are so old that they all typically creak.
We took off uneventfully.

Around one thousand feet the plane dipped to
the left and the pilots started grabbing for
controls. Everybody put their helmets on
and prepared for an early exit. Goggles
were on crooked. Helmets were loose. But
in the first few seconds everybody on the
plane did a great job getting ready. We all
took off our seat belts.

One thousand feet isn't the optimal altitude
for parachute deployment. But it's better
than crashing with a plane. As we all
started to consider an exit the pilot gave
his guidance that we all needed to stay on
the plane. He clearly knew that he had
control of the plane and probably tried to
climb to get us high enough for a safer
exit. With only one engine and a full load
of people, they weren't able to climb.

At this point nobody but the pilots knew
exactly what had happened. I assumed that
the left engine had failed. Dennis, who was
sitting to my left told me later that he saw
what was happening. In a sense, I'm happy
that I didn't.

The pilots radioed for emergency landing
status and turned the plane around. They
made a great landing, but were coming in
fast. Looking out the back of the plane we
could tell that as they pushed the brakes
hard they were moving to the right side of
the runway. Eventually we came to a stop
and got off of the airplane as the lovely
smell of burned rubber permeated the scene.

We were all quite surprised to see what had
happened: the propeller fell off. It
didn't get bent. It didn't stop working.
It fell off. The pilots saw it flying ahead
of them just after it fell off. We have no
idea where it landed, but we all know that
it could do some serious damage.

We had about three first-jump students on
the plane. They had the luxury of ignorance
for the first few seconds after the plane
dove, but they quickly realized that this
wasn't normal as the rest of the plane got
serious.

I definitely prefer landing myself under a
canopy to landing with the plane. The
pilots did a great job keeping everybody
calm while dealing with a tough situation.

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  propeller skydiving misc

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  misc

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  misc

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  misc

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  emelie joe emergency skydiving andrew