Description:

Unable to locate pilot chute and / or possible hard pull / Low pull resulting in terminal impact on ground.

Jon was an active skydiver and expert paraglider pilot with great awareness of his body and his surroundings.

He was a very safe and confident BASE jumper and he always opened high to the point where others would joke about it with him.

He had done over 30 skydives, 10 balloon jumps and multiple helicopter jumps in the Mutation Hybrid suit before taking it BASE jumping from Monte Brento and then Lauterbrunnen.

He mentioned how easy the pull was in the mutation Hybrid suit.

He had good exits in Monte Brento although his flights were slow.

Detailed description :

The incident took place on Jons second jump of the day, his first jump was uneventful had an ok exit and high pull as usual.

On last jump one of the instructors asked Jon if he was happy with the way he had his PC as the instructor said he is not happy with the way it looked but everything was routed correctly and Jon did not seem phased

Jon exited a little head high which then pushed him head low and off axis for a couple of seconds. At this point most of the group except one instructor lost sight of him after a few seconds he came back into view and he was in a stable body position and flying well and a very safe distance away from the wall.

As per normal with Jon he went to deploy at a very safe altitude it was then the group could see something was wrong and that he began to struggle to either locate the pilot chute or extract the pilot chute. He continued to locate/extract his pilot chute which he did just before impact which was at a very high speed at this point. It was clear this was a fatal and the group immediately went into emergency procedures.

It was clear that Jon had impacted on his back side on the upper legs lower back region due to the large dirt stains. He had bounced roughly 10 metres from the initial impact point and was laying face down. His canopy was at line stretch but it was clear that this was from the impact as the bottom closing loop was missing and the top closing loop was broken in 2.

Members on the ground had filmed his flight and after review it was said” Jon initiated the deployment sequence at a more than safe altitude with a stable flare and that made several attempts to either locate or extract the pilot chute. Whilst still fighting he was kicking his legs as went into a steep and very fast dive”. The video did not film the impact but witnesses say that he went into a front loop as such as he finally deployed his pilot chute at approximately 30-40 feet before impact.

Short statement on the way his PC was Packed.

“It was fully stuffed into the BOC with only the carbon fibre tubular, hollow handle sticking out. LTBJ do not recommend this way of packing or jumping a pilot chute as the bulkiest part of the pilot chute is on the inside of the elastic on the BOC.

Jon was a great human being and a fun guy to be around he was fit both physically and mentally and he was current at air sports. He was a great addition to the LTBJ family and we are devastated by what has happened.

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