If both a skydiver’s main and reserve parachutes fail completely, the person falls at terminal velocity (roughly 120 mph or 190 km/h) and hits the ground with almost no chance of survival. A true dual failure is extraordinarily rare, though, because modern skydiving systems are designed with multiple layers of redundancy specifically to prevent it. Understanding how those layers work, why they occasionally break down, and what the human body faces at impact explains both the terror and the near-impossibility of this scenario.
How Rare Is a Total Parachute Failure?
Every skydiving rig carries two independent parachutes: a main canopy the jumper deploys first and a reserve packed as a backup. In 2024, about 12.3% of USPA members reported using their reserve at least once, totaling roughly 5,080 reserve deployments across the year, or about 1 reserve use per 764 jumps. The vast majority of those reserve rides ended safely. A scenario where both canopies fail to produce any usable drag is so uncommon that skydiving fatality statistics are dominated by human error (misjudging altitude, landing in hazardous areas, failing to follow emergency procedures) rather than equipment failure.
Student rigs add yet another safeguard: an automatic activation device, a small electronic unit that senses altitude and falling speed, then fires the reserve if the jumper hasn’t deployed anything by a preset altitude. This means even if a student freezes or loses consciousness, the reserve opens on its own. Experienced jumpers also commonly use these devices.
Why a Reserve Might Also Fail
When a main canopy malfunctions, the standard procedure is to cut it away and then pull the reserve handle. Problems arise when the main doesn’t fully clear before the reserve opens. In the worst case, the departing main wraps around the deploying reserve and creates what’s called a main-reserve entanglement. Once two canopies are tangled together, there is little a skydiver can do to fix it.
A separate failure mode involves the pilot chute, the small fabric disc that catches air and pulls the larger canopy out of its container. Two situations typically cause a pilot chute to fail: either it can’t generate enough drag to pull the closing pin, or the internal line connecting it to the pin is misrouted so it pulls on a container flap instead. Common reasons for insufficient drag include a worn-out pilot chute, one that wasn’t properly cocked before the jump, or a closing loop that’s too tight. These are maintenance and packing issues, which is why reserve repacking is legally regulated.
FAA regulations require reserve parachutes made of synthetic materials (nylon, rayon, or similar) to be inspected and repacked by a certified rigger every 180 days. Reserves containing silk or other natural fibers must be repacked every 60 days. These intervals exist specifically to catch wear, packing errors, and material degradation before they cause failures.
What Happens to the Body at Impact
A skydiver in freefall reaches terminal velocity in about 12 seconds, settling at roughly 120 mph (193 km/h) in a belly-to-earth position. At that speed, hitting the ground is not survivable in any conventional sense. Research on impact injuries shows a clear relationship between velocity and trauma. Spinal fractures become expected above about 45 mph (70 km/h). Ruptures of the aorta, the body’s largest artery, occur consistently above 60 mph (100 km/h). At speeds above 55 mph (90 km/h), dismemberment can occur. Terminal velocity exceeds all of these thresholds by a wide margin.
The body essentially decelerates from 120 mph to zero in a fraction of a second. Every organ continues moving forward at impact speed while the skeletal structure stops, causing massive internal shearing. The heart tears away from the aorta, the brain impacts the inside of the skull, and bones fracture throughout the body. Death is typically instantaneous.
Survivors Do Exist, Barely
A handful of people have survived falls from extreme heights, though nearly all had some partial canopy deployment that slowed them below true terminal velocity. The factors that occasionally allow survival include landing on a surface that extends the deceleration (deep snow, thick vegetation, steep slopes, or swampy ground), having a partially inflated or tangled canopy that still creates meaningful drag, and sheer physiological luck in terms of how the body is oriented at impact.
Survivors of high-altitude falls almost universally suffer catastrophic injuries: shattered pelvises, spinal fractures, traumatic brain injuries, and ruptured organs. Recovery, when it happens, takes months or years and often involves permanent disability. These cases are statistical outliers, not evidence that surviving a true no-canopy impact is plausible.
What Skydivers Are Trained to Do
Skydiving emergency training focuses on a clear decision sequence: recognize the malfunction, cut away the main canopy, deploy the reserve. This happens at altitude, giving the reserve time to inflate. Jumpers practice this sequence repeatedly so it becomes automatic under stress. The critical variable is altitude awareness. A skydiver who spends too long trying to fix a malfunctioning main may not have enough height left for the reserve to fully open.
If a jumper does find themselves under a partially functioning canopy (even a badly tangled one providing some drag), training emphasizes choosing the best available landing surface. Trees, while dangerous, can absorb energy gradually. The recommended technique for an unavoidable tree landing is to keep feet and knees tightly together, hold elbows against the chest, and cover the face with the hands. The jumper often passes through branches and hits the ground below, but the tree canopy dissipates some energy along the way.
For any landing, skydivers learn the parachute landing fall (PLF), a technique borrowed from military parachuting where you distribute impact force across the side of your body rather than absorbing it through your legs. Under a partial malfunction with higher-than-normal descent speed, a good PLF can mean the difference between broken bones and fatal injuries.
Why Equipment Alone Isn’t the Full Picture
The USPA emphasizes that most skydiving fatalities trace back to human decisions, not gear failures. Jumping with poorly maintained equipment, skipping reserve repack cycles, attempting advanced maneuvers beyond one’s skill level, or failing to execute emergency procedures at the correct altitude all contribute far more to fatal outcomes than mechanical failure does. A properly maintained rig with a current reserve repack, jumped by a trained skydiver who follows emergency protocols, has an almost vanishingly small chance of producing a true dual failure. The system is designed so that multiple independent things must go wrong simultaneously for both canopies to be unavailable, and the training exists to ensure the human element doesn’t become the weakest link in that chain.