You’re about to free-fall from an airplane at 30,000 feet. You take a deep breath. You jump: You’re stuck to the plane.
This is what happened high over Lima, Peru, to skydiver Fernando Gava in the video above, taken by his friend Maurice Mathey. Gava is an experienced skydiver with more than 1,000 jumps to his name. And it’s not that his trusty parachute failed him. It was his pants. One leg of his jumpsuit got caught on the exit step, according to Mathey. (If Gava had been wearing normal pants, this would be very a different video.)
So the skydiver hung there, struggling to break free as the plane circled at 10,000 feet above his stunned friends and family watching below. Thanks to the hook knife he always keeps handy when jumping, he was able at last to cut his pant leg away from the plane and fall.
After deploying his reserve chute, Gava floated safely to the ground, where he was quickly surrounded by his worried audience. The only injury he suffered was minor: a cut on his hand he got as he worked the knife to free himself.
