That was how I had made up my mind to deal with it back when I used to skydive. Glad I never had to though. Also as a working joe, I never tossed my cutaway & reserve handles because they were too expensive.

The USPA recognizes both methods as valid, each having its advantages and disadvantages

@@jumpmasterjm What are the advantages of cutting away in this situation? I could see how it might be better just to teach a student one method so as not to confuse them and waste precious altitude during a high speed malfunction, but besides that why would you ever want to cut away a total malfunction?

@@jaffacalling53 Dynamic shock when opening the reserve can easily dislodge the main's pin, and you will have two out. In the worst case, your main will open into your reserve and mess it up.

You're thinking of a tandem jump where the Tandem instructor deploys a drogue chute during freefall. The purpose of this is to slow the tandem pair to a speed as if they were just a single jumper. A single jumper doesn't throw a pilot chute until deployment time. In a perfect jump of a single jumper, which almost all are, when the pilot chute is pitched, it grabs good, clean air and is pulled upward, pulling the bridle from the bridle cover on the side of the rig. When the bridle has reached line length, it pulls the closing pin from the closing loop. 4 flaps open and the deployment bag, which is connected to the bridle lifts out of the container as the bridle continues line length. The lines that are stowed on the deployment bag begin to pop out of the stowes as the d bag continues line length. Once all the stowes are released, the d bag is pulled off the canopy or from the other direction if you wanna look at it that way, the canopy is pulled from the d bag. The lines that were stowed are connected to the canopy on one end and the risers on the other. The risers pull out of the container by releasing either tuck tabs or magnetic covers. Air fills the nose cells of the canopy and the canopy begins to inflate. All this happens, to a perfectly flying canopy, within 3-5 seconds in a perfect world. In this case, when the pilot chute was pitched, it done it's job, but something was causing the closing pin not to be able to be pulled from the closing loop, resulting in a pilot chute in tow.

Tandems do that. One for stability. Two for speed reduction.

@@admiralbenbow5083 Speed reduction only. Stability is supposed to be achieved through good body position and flying by the instructor. That's done on every jump before the drogue is thrown.

Watched a seminar with John Leblanc at the BPA expo a few weeks ago. He showed us a video of trying to get both the main and the reserve pilot chute to interact with each other whilst simultaneously deploying both. Try as they might PD couldn't get an interaction, over dozens of jumps. John even said it began to annoy him how he couldn't get anything to happen. It's chopping away 2 out that causes issues. As for pulling the pin manually by the bridal well - this can only work if your pilot chute isn't cocked and generating enough force to begin the deployment sequence. If a cocked PC isn't pulling the pin with it's 70+ lbs of force then your arm behind your back definitely will not. Don't waste time messing about, just pull the reserve.

A bunch of people have bounced tugging on that pilot chute bridle. Just pull your reserve

No, there's no alternative approach that wouldn't include huge downsides itself. The reserve PC here wasn't really trapped into the burble (also: It was not a burble caused by the main PC but a burble caused by the Skydiver itself). I've seen (and experienced) much worse hesitations of spring loaded pilot chutes. Whenever you launch a spring loaded PC vom a belly position, you'll never now what will happen. Most of the times the PC will launch pretty fast. I some cases it will dance around into the burble and in some rare cases the hesitation lasts for a couple of seconds. Decades ago, Relative Workshop (today known as UPT) introduced the balloon reserve PC. They claimed that it would perform much better in these situations. I'm not sure. I've also seen hesitations of these pilot chutes. Additionally, other people claimed that this special construction would come with it own problems, namely a reduced drag that could (!) result in hesitations in low speed cutaways (which are much more common than high speed malfunctions). So, dealing with a large burble caused of a belly flying skydiver is not an easy task for gear manufacturers. As soon as you solve one problem, you can create another problem. So, alternatively, what could the Skydiver do in this situation? He could lean a little bit to the side to reduce the burble - in this case, you never know, if the main PC would be also released - so, you could create another problem. Skydiving is a risky activity. In my opinion, the goal should be to prevent pc in tow malfunctions and/or horshoe malfunctions as follows: - Always pull in a good, stable body position. Practice stable pulls and a good release of the main pc. - Double check, if the main PC was properly cocked. - Be sure that your gear is in good shape. Wear and tear especially of the following components is critical: Main pc, kill line, bridle, main-pin and loop. - Be sure that the bridle is routed properly. - Be sure that the main PC is packed well (no hard pull, no excess bridle coming undone)

He has a 3rd canopy on his waist

@@benbazy9238 Does he really?

Yes, they have 3 canopys because they intentionally created a malfunction in the first, for demonstration

How so?