On 2005-04-28 16:23, Jay Honeck wrote:
I fly in that environment. There's a very active jump club at our
airport. I deal with it every nice day I fly and have for a long time.
If it's safe why in the world did he fly into the jumper? Keep the
jumpers below the airplane and you don't have an issue. They don't
always land or approach where you think they will. Anything within 1/2
mile of the drop target should be suspect.


Deland is unlike any jump operation I've seen (and, admittedly, I haven't
seen more than a handful), in that there are literally no gaps between
jumps. They have so many jumpers that want to skydive that they are able to
keep two (and possibly more) Twin Otters running continually. They never
shut their engines down -- they simply taxi back to load, load as many as
will safely fit, and blast off again.

In fact, the only time we saw them stop was to refuel. It's an amazing
operation -- but one that doesn't allow a sensible suggestion like yours to
be implemented. There will ALWAYS be planes beneath jumpers in a
continuous operation like this one.

There was a jumper club at ESCN a few years ago, and they never shut
down their plane either; something about the turboprop engine start/stop
cycles being counted towards maintenance intervals instead of just
running time, but I'm not sure about how it worked exactly.

/Rolf