TO jump off a plane with just a parachute takes a leap of faith. But for two skydivers it almost became a leap of fate.
This is the near-death moment two skydivers almost collided with the plane they had just jumped out of in Thailand only seconds before.
The dive at first seemed like any other of the 10,000 plus jumps instructor Forest Pullman had taken when he and his tandem passenger dropped 13,000 feet (3,962.4 meters) into the air.
But just as his partner is getting her first rush of adrenaline and waving her hands in the air, Pullman is looking at something else.
It was their plane. And it was coming right towards them.
Mere moments later the plane is next to them, so close Pullman’s drogue and bridle (which are used as a pilot parachute to deploy the larger parachute for the landing) hangs over the wing.
“Our bodies just missing the prop, wing, and tail,” Pullman pointed out in the YouTube video he posted Sunday of the terrifying near-collision.
But just as soon as they could have been shredded by the propeller, the plane is underneath them.
While his passenger screamed “Oh my god” and had the time of her life, unaware of what they just nearly escaped, Pullman couldn’t help but wiped his forehead in relief.
“Now she knows we almost got cut in half,” he wrote in the video, before seeming to dole out some advice to fellow instructors: “Stay calm, keep smiling.”
The instructor then told his passenger “we’re good to go baby” and gave her a high five before a safe and uneventful landing.
“We made it!” they both said, relieved for different reasons as their feet touched solid ground.
The video ends with one final note: “To live another day! But time to reconsider... BE SAFE OUT THERE!”
In the video’s information Pullman wrote that he doesn’t know how he and his passenger got so lucky during the October 2014 jump.
“The pilot drove the airplane 180 degrees right at me and my tandem passenger. I have never heard of this happening. After some research and talking to friends about it I now know of two other incidents like this.”
Pullman has been a skydiving instructor for 15 years and currently lives in Bangkok.
“Thai Sky” is written on the wing of the airplane he jumped out of, and based on the code on the underside of the wing, appears to belong to Thai Sky Adventure, according to the Independent.(SD-Agencies)
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