On November 4th I had a parachute malfunction at about 4000 feet after opening. This is an account of what happened and the decisions I made which got me down safely.

On opening I had line twists. The line twists twisted around the slider about a foot and a half above my head. Keeping in mind that this could result in rapid loss of altitude I started to kick out the line twists (while remaining aware of whether or not the canopy was flying straight and if I was losing altitude faster than normal). It did not appear that I was losing altitude or turning, so I kept dealing with the line twists while keeping a conscious judgment of time so that I could initiate emergency procedures at sufficient altitude.

I imagine that it took about 8 seconds to undo the line twists. At that time I started looking around (in both directions) to find the airport and immediately turned 180 degrees towards the airport (while not turning too sharp to avoid losing more altitude in the turn than required). During this time while dealing with the malfunction, I was moving away from the airport, which is why this resulted in a near off-landing.

I knew that I could deal with the malfunction quickly as I have done it plenty of times in the past, so I made a decision to undo the line twists and determine if the slider did not tangle in the lines. I knew if the lines could not be undone that I would go straight to emergency procedures.

In the image, the pointed line represents my final approach. The circle represents where I landed. I determined that my only choices were to stay on final into the wind and risk landing on the runway (hoping to land on the corner of the field) or turn cross-wind and land between manifest and the trees. At the point that I was at the decision making point where I would need to turn cross-wind to make my alternate landing, I made the decision that I didn’t have enough altitude to overshoot the runway and turned.

According to where I landed, I in fact did not have enough altitude to reach the field and avoid a runway landing so I was happy with my decision. I landed with no problems.

While in the air I was definitely getting nervous. I wasn’t sure for a while if I was going to make it to a good landing spot. I didn’t know for sure what decision I would have to make until probably only 500 feet. Though even at several thousand feet I had narrowed my choices down to two that I could accept.

My choices were very limited, because I knew “about” where I would be landing. I wasn’t sure if I had enough altitude to land between the runway and the trees and wrote this off as a terrible idea from the start. If I could have made it, my landing would probably have been a disaster. In the end, I know I couldn’t have made it there anyway.

Another choice could have been to make a 180 degree turn to the opposite direction, fly away from the runway and land off in the field beyond the runway. That wasn’t an option for me since it would result in a downwind landing and the result of overshooting the field would have been having no choice but to land in a tree.

It makes you glad that you’re able to consider so many scenarios quickly.