Sky Diver Hurt in Jump as Chute Opens in Plane

A sky diver whose parachute inadvertently opened inside a plane was forced to leap when only 800 feet off the ground but landed in a clump of trees and survived. He was listed in guarded condition at a hospital, apparently with back injuries.

The chute had caught on the plane’s door, opened and was sucked outside. “He had to jump out. Otherwise he would have been pulled through the wall of the airplane,” a witness said. He said sky divers typically prefer jumps from 5,000 to 10,000 feet.

Drag from the partly opened chute helped break the man’s fall Sunday and may have saved his life, a companion said.