Student Fatality 19 July 2022 Boituva Brazil

On 8/2/2022 at 10:07 AM, earth2eric said:

A more thorough AFFI course. Stricter standards from aff examiners.

Husband has been an AFF I for 20 years, I/E for over 10. We've talked about this stuff quite a bit.

BITD, the cert course was a test and you best not fuck it up. You likely weren't at your home dz, you probably didn't know the evaluators (who's job description included being assholes) and they ramped up the pressure to 11. Your only jumps at the course were evaluation jumps. With rare exceptions, if you went home with a rating you earned and deserved it. Yes, there were flaws in the system, but it produced excellent AFFI's.

Today the courses are usually held at the candidate's dz. Often one or more of the evaluators are local jumpers.The first few days are practice jumps. A candidate doesn't start doing actual eval jumps until they are "ready".  A candidate could do all of their practice jumps and all of their eval jumps with the same evaluator. While the course material may be exactly the same, the pressure put on the candidate is far less than 20 years ago.

I'd submit that in many cases the candidates are too comfortable throughout the course. Being an AFF instructor isn't always comfortable and fun. Becoming one shouldn't be either. Practice jumps and evaluation jumps should be done with different evaluators. Each evaluation jump should be done with a different evaluator. Evaluators should not be from the candidates dropzone. Perhaps a return to the old method of the cert course being the test - if you need practice beforehand, take a pre-course. Show up at the cert course ready to have your ass handed to you.

Candidates flying skills.There's a big difference between belly fliers and freefliers, Belly fliers can usually pull an exit without funneling it; linked exits to belly are challenging for those who primarily freefly and you can't learn or practice exits in the tunnel. What wasn't so obvious to me is that many freefliers and those who have been primarily camera fliers or TM's have issues closing on a spinning student and even with staying close enough after release - they aren't used to being that close to anybody in freefall.

There are some folks who are chasing the AFF Examiner rating primarily to have it - as in I have all the other ones, this is the last and most prestigious one to have. Others are doing the bare minimum to keep the rating (one course every two years). Neither of these groups add anything to the examiner pool in terms of quality - if you aren't doing at least a couple courses per year, are you really current at skydiving like shit? (that's a joke btw - it's way harder than it looks to skydive that bad)

Can't blame the examiners for rating a candidate who meets the standards. Even if the examiner has a bit of a question in the back of their mind, the minimums were met. Can't pass Bob and fail Steve if they both met the same performance standards because you think Steve might not has what it takes in some intangible way. C's get degrees. How does an examiner keep the "got a feeling about this one" candidate who meets the minimums from being rated without it looking political or personal?  Every skydive has video. These things can be checked.

I'd hope that all examiners have zero desire to rate someone who they don't think has what it takes. I'd hope that all examiners have the ability to tell when someone doesn't have what it takes. Regardless, they have to rate someone who meets the minimums.

If you know an Examiner, talk to them about your concerns. It's likely they share some of them.

Totally not in the loop as far as how these qualifications work, but here’s one “out there” idea for a high-tech age. Develop a database with login credentials, save a video for every qualifying jump for a AFFI candidate (not only successful but failed ones as well). Then if something goes wrong down the road - it’d be easy to review if that instructor actually passed all requirements and who signed off for that. A step further would be to make a system where X number of independent examiners have to review the videos and ‘pass’ the candidate (e.g. 5 to review, 4 out of 5 to pass, or 10 to review, 6/7/8/9/10 of of 10 to pass). This would ensure a permanent record, a more unified approach towards standards required to pass and virtually eliminate any questions regarding qualifications of any given AFFI.

It may or may not be difficult to implement for reasons I don’t know. As I said, just poppped into my mind, decided to share.

1 hour ago, bsrodeo540 said:

Totally not in he loop as far as how these qualifications work, but here’s one “out there” idea for a high-tech age. Develop a database with login credentials, save a video for every qualifying jump for a AFFI candidate (not only successful but failed ones as well). Then if something goes wrong down the road - it’d be easy to review if that instructor actually passed all requirements and who signed off for that. A step further would be to make a system where X number of independent examiners have to review the videos and ‘pass’ the candidate (e.g. 5 to review, 4 out of 5 to pass, or 10 to review, 6/7/8/9/10 of of 10 to pass). This would ensure a permanent record, a more unified approach towards standards required to pass and virtually eliminate any questions regarding qualifications of any given AFFI.

It may or may not be difficult to implement for reasons I don’t know. As I said, just poppped into my mind, decided to share.

I would disagree with the permanent video records. Some things just don't age well. And under the current system, the candidate gets to elect to use video or not. It's highly recommended, but not required. This is because the candidate pays all costs. And the video can never be used to lower the score, only increase it. Anyone can pick apart a skydive in a slow motion review and find discrepancies all day. We currently depend on the eyeball of the examiner on the jump to provide the initial feedback of go/no-go. So all of that would have to change to implement your suggestion. 

I do however like having an outside examiner as an independent reviewer. Not sure how that would work other than situations where there's a disagreement about the scoring. It wouldn't be practical for every jump of a course. Again, this would increase costs to the candidate to hire a secondary or tertiary examiner. And whatever we can do to avoid cost increases would be a positive. 

Also, recommend that the mods edit the topic of this thread.