Skydiver has seizure at 9,000ft while plummeting to earth, survives

A skydiver was rescued in midair by his instructor after suffering a seizure at 9,000ft.

Christopher Jones passed out moments after leaving the plane on his training dive near Perth in November and was left spinning out of control. A video of the incident has been watched more than 3million times since being posted on YouTube this weekend.

After several failed attempts of trying to help him, instructor Sheldon McFarlane managed to grab the 22-year-old and deploy his parachute. Fortunately he regained consciousness at about 3,000ft and managed to land safely.

At no time was I worried he was going to hit the ground without a parachute, but given the circumstances and where we were I thought it would be better to get him under parachute earlier than later.

I managed to catch him on my second attempt and deploy his parachute. As far as difficult, yeah, it was OK. I got him.

• Sheldon McFarlane, instructor

Despite his epilepsy, Jones had been seizure-free for four years and his doctor said it was safe for him to skydive. But after this near-death experience he says he won't be skydiving again.

Although the footage, shot on McFarlane's headcam looks terrifying, the skydiving school's director Robin O'Neill explained that they use a computer system to deploy chutes automatically in case of accidents like this. "Having said that, we don't rely on mechanical devices to do the job a fully functioning free-dive instructor can do," O'Neill told ABC News.

I remember up until the point I blacked out and then waking up underneath the parachute at about 3,000 feet.

I think I'm fairly lucky, but the emergencies [automatic activation devices] on the chutes work nearly all the time so I think I would have been OK if the jump master hadn't actually caught me.

• Christopher Jones

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