See and avoid works in general aviation as a valuable tool to maintain separation between aircraft in the same airspace, and it works quite well in skydiving if applied. Too often skydivers are not trained, or simply forget to apply the method of looking around and scanning the air around them for other traffic. Hopefully none of us drive our cars without occasionally checking the mirrors or looking out the side window every once and a while. Keep that head moving, your canopy will continue to fly just fine if you take your eyes off the target for a moment.

Situation awareness is important to begin developing and practicing from the earliest of jumps. Usually you know how many people are going to be in the air with you at the same time, you shared the plane ride up with all of them. Start practicing the habit of accounting for all the other canopies while flying yours. Those you can’t account for, be extra vigilant in your search. It’s not as hard as it sounds.

Share the landing area, pilots do, and they haven’t got near the options we do as skydivers. They are usually limited to one or two choices for heading, and can rarely land more than one at a time, we have 360+ choices in heading, and countless number more runways than pilots. High performance canopy pilots share the same landing points through prior planning, and while fun jumpers might not need such planning, in place of it they need to select a different landing point than someone landing at the same time as them.

Predictable patterns, go a long way in the aviation world to preventing collisions. A standard pattern of downwind, base, and final goes a long way to helping predict and find traffic. If you cannot join the standard landing pattern, consider landing out, or at the very least be extra vigilant about keeping out of the way of other landing traffic, and not crating a hazard.

Flying the appropriate canopy for the skill of the pilot is often stated, and makes sense. One must be able to fly and make decisions for where the canopy is going to be, not for where it is now, and must be able to react at the speeds that the canopy covers distance. What is often overlooked IMO, is that the canopy choice must also be selected for the situation. Or better stated yet, the canopy you fly must match your skill level in the situation you are flying it. A person may have good canopy technique when in the comfort zone of their home DZ, large landing area, with the usual max of 14 other people in the air with them at any one time, but taking their pocket rocket canopy to a boogie, or bigway puts them outside their skill set on that canopy. At that point a change must be made, either choose a different canopy, or land further away from the crowd, as simply “flying conservatively” does not seen to be working.

And finally, missing by an inch is just a good as missing by a mile, if your alive to learn the lesson of your mistake afterward. Practice, practice, practice with your parachute, so that when the time comes for an emergency avoidance action is required, you can perform it.

Please, train yourselves to be better canopy pilots people, as I’m gonna be pretty pissed if someone else kills me.