Portimão - Briton dies in skydiving accident

Paul 12 October 2015

portimaoaerodrome A 45-year-old British man who was seriously injured in a parachuting incident on Sunday has died as a result of the accident.

Skydive Algarve which runs the centre at the Alvor aerodrome, Portimão is cooperating in an investigation while eye-witnesses to Sunday’s accident say the skydiver was caught by a strong gust of wind just as he approached the land and that he crashed into a wall.

Rescue workers at the scene said the injured skydiver had gone into cardiac arrest, was given resuscitation on site and then was rushed to the Barlavento Hospital for treatment which ultimately did not manage to save his life.

The man was taking part in an international skydiving festival which sees aficionados and experienced skydivers from all over the world congregate in Alvor, a key venue in the international skydiving scene.

The council-owned aerodrome is a well known skydiving centre with thousands of successful jumps carried out each year and there is no suspicion that anything other than bad luck, or maybe bad judgement, was involved in this latest fatality.

Three years ago this month the well-respected Algarve businessman Jonathon Wickham died in an accident at the airfield, since which two further skydivers, Ana Peixoto and Stefan Hewekeri have died in separate jumps that went tragically wrong.

Comments

0 #3 Pat Peters 2015-10-21 13:59

Quoting Reve:

. The media ,of course, are quick to blow up any event from an accident into a huge tale of someones negligence, bad training, faulty equipment, etc, etc. Most often without any knowledge of the sport concerned. Simply eager to make a big splash in their paper. Sad .

with the algarve news a notable exception.
Pat.

+2 #2 Reve 2015-10-21 11:48

All extreme sports carry the risk of accidents happening. Everyone who takes part in them knows the risk that they take and accepts this fact. The media ,of course, are quick to blow up any event from an accident into a huge tale of someones negligence, bad training, faulty equipment, etc, etc. Most often without any knowledge of the sport concerned. Simply eager to make a big splash in their paper. Sad .

+2 #1 liveaboard 2015-10-13 09:43

My skydiving friends tell me that it's not the risk of death that makes it so thrilling, but the minute of free fall.
Then they started base jumping; even more dangerous and with almost no free fall time, they said it was really great fun.
Deaths are fairly rare [remember that many thousands of injury free jumps take place in Portimao every year], but they will keep happening.
Skydiving is fundamentally dangerous.

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