Friday, May 18, 2012

Owner: Skydiving injuries unusual

FRANKFORT, Ind. (WLFI) - After two amateur skydivers were injured in the past two weeks, the owner of that skydiving company is speaking with us about safety.

The owner at Skydive Indianapolis said injuries from parachuting are actually very rare. And the thought of jumping from thousands of feet in the air didn't seem to phase one group of first-time jumpers.

"It looks like you have to be careful and follow what your instructor tells you, but from the movie that they showed us before, the introduction movie, it looks safe if you do everything properly," first-timer Oleksndr Kiavchenko said.

When Kiavchenko and his friends took their first tandem skydiving jump Friday afternoon, he wasn't concerned about his safety, even after learning two people had been injured parachuting in Frankfort over the past two weeks.

"I feel comfortable," he said. "I hope nothing will happen."

And after dropping from a plane, thousands of feet in the air, "nothing" did happen. Aside from an adrenaline rush.

Despite those recent injuries, a smooth day of skydiving Friday was no surprise to owner Bob Dougherty.

"You go 15 years without any injuries, other than scrapes and bruises of course, and then you get two broken legs in two weeks," Dougherty said. "So yeah, it makes you scratch your head a little bit."

Dougherty said in both of those cases, the injured parachutists were jumping on their own for the first time, without a tandem professional. Any time someone makes a solo jump, the company requires them to take an 8-hour course first. Even tandem jumpers must watch an instructional video.

Dougherty said both injured jumpers did not listen to instructions over a radio. He said his experienced instructors can only teach so much.

"My son got his driver's license, he got 100 on the test, but the real test is the first time somebody pulled in front of him, and how he reacts, and that's kind of the same circumstance," he said.

Dougherty claimed that statistically speaking, a jumper is more likely to be injured while driving to and from the facility than while actually skydiving.