Fear Bails Out : Skydivers Don’t Give Up Despite Crash

Six weeks ago today, a plane carrying a pilot, an observer and 20 skydivers crashed on takeoff at Perris Valley Airport. Sixteen died.

The six who survived were spared because of their positions in the airplane. They were in the back, behind those who perished. As members of the local “Airmoves” and visiting Dutch “Tomscat” four-man teams, their aerial routines required them to free-fall longer, so they were nearest the jump door--at the rear of the plane--where they could exit first and leave the skies clear for the others.

For them, the impact was cushioned by the bodies of their comrades.

Operations were shut down for six days, but then it was business as usual--or as usual as could be expected during mourning for dead friends.

The skydivers, whose numbers are dominated by young professionals, are a tight community. A video featuring the victims was spliced together. Snapshots were put in the window of the airport office. A memorial fund was started and quickly soared beyond $60,000. Black T-shirts, carrying the slogan “Flying to Eternity” and the names of those on the plane, sold by the hundreds.

One who died was Jacquelyn Downs, 27, a popular airport employee and the only woman on the plane. Ten days later, Larry Downs made his first jump in tribute to his daughter.

Consider Richard Stuart, the Airmoves’ regular video cameraman, who usually follows the other divers down. The clasp on his camera helmet had broken earlier that morning. While he was off repairing it, a friend, Dave Clarke, filled in. Clarke was killed.

“It’s an odd feeling to be alive,” Stuart said.

He carries the broken clasp on his key chain.

“It’s the luckiest piece I’ve got,” he said. “Better than a rabbit’s foot.”

Then there was the Tomscat cameraman, who was unable to jump after suffering whiplash two days earlier. Wayne Flemington, 27, a skydiver who manages the ultralight aircraft operation at the airport, took his place. The plane was 30 to 50 feet off the ground when its right engine sputtered and died. It rolled to the right, nose down.

Flemington yelled, “Hold on! Hold on!” He was still yelling “Hold on!” when they dragged him out of the wreckage, before he lapsed into a three-day coma. Flemington suffered a broken back and remains hospitalized, hoping to walk again.

Tom Falzone is a member of the Airmoves and assistant airport manager. He played linebacker at Pacific Palisades High when Jay Schroeder was the quarterback. His girlfriend, Melanie Conatser, and her brother Patrick manage the airport for their father, Ben, who owns it.

Responsible for final checks, Falzone was last into the plane, braced against the rear bulkhead with teammate Troy Widgery, 25, and also a survivor. There are no seats. Falzone and Widgery were the only two facing forward. All the others were in standard position, seated on the floor, three abreast, facing the exit door.

“I could see out the right windows,” Falzone said. “I saw blue sky, then we tipped to the right and I saw the horizon. I thought we were trying to avoid something. I don’t remember (hearing a malfunction of) the engines. Then the plane started heading toward the ground and I saw the green grass. I thought, ‘Oh, no, we’re going in!’ “The last thing I can remember was thinking about my girlfriend. We’ve always said, ‘God forbid we’d ever lose an airplane, but if we do it’s going to kill a lot of people.’ I remember thinking, ‘Melanie, oh, my God, Mel, it’s happening. The nightmare has happened.’ I don’t remember the impact.”

Falzone, 32, considers himself the luckiest of all on the plane. He got out with two broken lumbar vertebrae and “some (broken) ribs, some toes, some teeth and a concussion.” He plans to be jumping again by late summer, in time to resume training for the U.S. Nationals at Eloy, Ariz., in November.

Airmoves Capt. Dan Brodsky-Chenfeld, 30, of Sun City, has similar ambitions. Dan B-C, as friends call him, was seated facing Falzone. Teammate James Layne, seated alongside, would die. Brodsky-Chenfeld wound up at the front of the cabin with a broken neck, a skull fracture and collapsed lung, under the pile of bodies that made the sides of the plane bulge.

Rescuers heard him trying to breathe underneath the pile. When he awakened in the hospital he was wearing a cumbersome “halo” head and shoulder brace to keep him from moving his neck, but his sense of humor was intact.

“My first thought was that they’d made me into a cameraman,” said Brodsky-Chenfeld, who still wears the halo. “I don’t remember any of this, just what people tell me. My brain just came back three weeks ago. I think it took a look (at the body) and said, ‘I’m going on vacation until they fix this.’ ”

Falzone is back at work at the airport, and Brodsky-Chenfeld has been back to visit a couple of times, walking tentatively with a cane he needs to “see” the ground, because he can’t lower his head.

Elsewhere, the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration are trying to work out why the plane, Twin Otter N141PV, went down. The plane--formally a De Havilland DH-6, built in Canada--has a good reputation for safety and reliability.

Preliminary investigation showed that fuel feeding the right engine contained five gallons of water.

Also:

--An NTSB investigator said the plane was overloaded.

--An automatic propeller-feathering device had been disconnected.

--The skydivers weren’t wearing seat belts.

Patrick Conatser denies that the plane was overloaded.

“The maximum gross is 11,579 (pounds),” Conatser said. “Everything they came up with on the airplane was 11,566.”

The NTSB said the limit under Part 135 of the regulations was 9,900, but Conatser said that applies only to planes carrying commercial passengers, not to those carrying cargo--or skydivers.

“We’re a Part 91 operation,” Conatser said. “Skydivers aren’t considered passengers.”

The fuel, he says, was the only problem. It was transferred from an airport storage tank to a truck and then into the airplane.

“We got contaminated fuel from an independent pumper,” Conatser said. “One of our pumps broke. (The independent pumper) pumped it out of our tank through their pumps and filters and into our truck. (Since) my parents bought the airport in ‘77, not once had we had a problem with fuel contamination.”

Earlier, Ben Conatser had said the automatic feathering device designed to reduce drag when an engine quits was disconnected because of unreliability, and that pilot Rowland Guilford, who died in the crash, had feathered the right propeller manually.

As for seat belts, skydivers don’t like to wear them. They would rather take their chances jumping out of a plane than struggling to free themselves from a crippled one. And the lap belts, as installed according to regulations, are of questionable value. With the skydivers on the floor facing backward, an impact would simply eject them from the belts.

“They are there for the individual to wear at his own discretion,” Falzone said. “Now we’re making them wear them.”

But only until the plane reaches a minimum jump height of about 2,000 feet.

Falzone, who was facing forward, said, “The FAA told me when I was in the hospital, ‘You were lucky you weren’t wearing your seat belt.’ The belts are rated for nine Gs (nine times the force of gravity), and they said that crash was 15 Gs. It would have cut me in two, or at least given me severe internal injuries that I would not have lived through.”

No skydiver interviewed blamed the sport for the tragedy.

Brodsky-Chenfeld, a 12-year veteran who led the national championship team last year, said, “This is the best maintenance and care of airplanes I’ve seen.”

Kate Cooper, who has businesses related to the sport and organizes special events, said, “The mood has been changed, obviously. But we’ve got things scheduled all through the summer . . . team practices, movie work. . . . The deaths will not be listed by the U.S. Parachuting Assn. as skydiving fatalities. These were people in an airplane.”

Debby Daniel, a 37-year-old lawyer, said, “I’ll never be the same. I was pretty close to eight of the people who died.”

Jacquelyn Downs had given her the butterfly pin that Daniel has pinned to her jumpsuit. She has jumped “30 or 40 times” since the accident.

“I’ll touch that pin and say, ‘OK, Jackie, here we go,’ ” Daniel said.

Falzone said, “I’ve asked people to be honest with me--if it’s inhibited them from skydiving out of Otters or skydiving here, and everybody’s response is, ‘Hey, that’s part of the sport. . . . All of us know that skydiving itself isn’t dangerous.”

Worst Accidents Involving Skydivers

Aug. 27, 1967--Sixteen drowned when they missed their drop zone by 10 miles and fell into Lake Erie. Two survived.

March 8, 1973--Fourteen, 11 of them members of the U.S. Army Golden Knights team, died when their C-47 broke up in flight.

Dec. 5, 1981--Twelve died when their Beech D-18 crashed into Pearl Harbor. One survived.

Sept. 11, 1982--Forty-four, 23 of them French jumpers, died when a U.S. Army Chinook helicopter crashed at an air show at Mannheim, Germany.

Oct. 17, 1982--Fourteen, 12 of them jumpers, died when a Beech D-18 crashed and exploded at Taft, Calif. The NTSB determined that the plane was overloaded.

Aug. 21, 1983--Eleven, including nine jumpers, died when a Lockheed L-18 Lodestar stalled and plunged 12,000 feet at Silvana, Wash. The 15 survivors included 11 who jumped before the plane went out of control and four who escaped on the way down.

Sept. 29, 1985--Seventeen, including 16 jumpers, died when a Cessna 208 Caravan crashed after takeoff near Atlanta. Investigators blamed an overload and contaminated fuel.

April 22, 1992--Sixteen, including 14 jumpers, died when one engine quit and their Twin Otter crashed on takeoff at Perris, Calif. Six survived. Contaminated fuel was found.

SOURCE--Parachutist Magazine