This is an excerpt from a report made to the Aviation Safety Reporting System. The narrative is written by the pilot, rather than FAA or NTSB officials. To maintain anonymity, many details, such as aircraft model or airport, are often scrubbed from the reports.
After clearing the southeastern boundary of Class Bravo airspace, I climbed to 5500 feet. The weather conditions were VFR.
As I crossed over the top of ZZZ at 5500, I saw a skydiver pass directly in front of the aircraft.
I do not know the horizontal distance between the aircraft and the skydiver, but I would estimate less than 150 feet.
I had been monitoring ZZZ Approach. After the incident, I changed to the local frequency.
Approximately five minutes after the near miss, I heard Ground Operations asking the Jump Pilot if they were communicating with me. I replied that we were not in contact.
Ground Operations advised me that there was a NOTAM for jumping operations. I responded that I had not checked the NOTAMs for ZZZ since I wasn’t landing there.
I had no further contact with Ground Operations, however, I heard them asking the pilot of the jump plane to contact ZZZ1 Approach for more information about my aircraft. The Ground Ops person also referenced that there was video of the incident.
Primary Problem: Human Factors
ACN: 1935539
In the middle of my Sport Pilot cross-country solo from KAPA to (now) KFLY, I was already freaked out by the usual Front Range turbulence—and then a glider tow passed over me, maybe 150ft, 90 degrees to my course, completely out of the blue (so to speak). Taught me more than one lesson.
(Hope I don’t double- or triple-post—something happened.)
This kind of issue first came into my view when I was flying IFR near the Charlotte Class B. I was vectored directly overhead KDCM where there apparently was a diving operation going on. Unaware of this (just like Wylbur Wrong’s case, DCM wasn’t my destination nor was it originally part of my flyover waypoints) I figured it would be a nice courtesy to give a call up on CTAF using Comm #2, but promptly got chewed out by ground ops for “ignoring” their calls not to fly overhead. Issue was that I had zero obligation to monitor CTAF since I was IFR and following CLT’s instructions, and CLT had not been announcing the diving ops, not at least during my contact with them. No drivers were harmed but nowadays I make it a point to steer clear of any PJA regardless it’s VFR IFR day or night.
As a former skydiver driver, I would point out jump pilots are required to be in contact with ATC so often the CTAF announcements are quick and limited due to that. Also that is really the best communication option for the jump pilot anyway with ATC providing the big picture. Aircraft that run a fairly normal pattern are typically well below opening altitude where skydivers will be far more visible. The key for GA pilots operating around active drop zones is to A. don’t directly over fly the field, B. get flight following.
My complaint these days is actually some drop zones that use CTAF as “manifest” and air to air between jump planes. With their altitude, they tend to block radio calls for a huge radius.
Pilots could learn a lot more from these reports if the airport identifiers were not redacted.
Normally where I’m based announcements of parachuting activity are made on approach and ctaf with alerts prior to and at the time of the jumps. Passing over an airport with the parachute symbol and not monitoring approach/ctaf can be very hazardous. Probably best to maintain a sufficient distance regardless of altitude – the jumps can start quite high.
Reminds me of jump operations being done at an intersection in the approach corridor to CLE north west of CAK. The jump plane would climb to their normal altitude and give a machine gun alert, that they were releasing jumpers. Could not get them to respond when you asked them where they were. This resulted in complaints being filed so that a parachute was put on the sectionals to alert people. Then the FAA realized this was causing problems for the standard approach into CLE. So the jump school had to do a NOTAM for this NOT associated with an airport and clear it with Approach as I recall.
Jumpers being dropped like this with a Notam for the airport and not involving approach control is a bit naive from my experience.