4-8: Incident Reports

A. Incidents

Reporting incidents helps USPA track current trends in the field and gives direction to USPA staff and board members addressing equipment issues, training methods, and safety procedures. It is particularly important to report any event that requires a jumper to receive medical attention or raises a safety concern, but jumpers should also report noteworthy malfunctions, unsafe procedures, unusual or ethically unacceptable skydives, or other extraordinary occurrences concerning skydiving operations. USPA rating holders and S&TAs, the leaders in the field, are the key to encouraging skydivers to file incident reports.

Incident reports are warranted for (but not limited to):

• Fatalities
• Injuries requiring medical attention (anything more than local first aid)
• Any injury to a student (including tandem students)
• Reserve deployments (intentional or unintentional)
• AAD activations
• Off-field landing or obstacle landings (buildings and other objects, water, power lines, trees)
• Emergency exits from an aircraft
• Freefall or canopy collisions
• Premature deployments in aircraft or freefall
• Harness or canopy damaged during jump
• The unplanned dropping of equipment during jump
• Anything filed on an insurance claim

B. Investigation and Reporting of Incidents

Fatalities and other significant incidents are an unfortunate part of skydiving. To help skydivers learn essential lessons from the mistakes of others and reduce the number and severity of incidents, USPA members should fill out an incident report when it meets any of the conditions in the list above. When appropriate, an S&TA can act as an impartial investigator. Jumpers should coordinate efforts through the local S&TA when an event requires several reports, witness accounts or personal observations of the investigator. Incidents can be reported online at uspa.org/ir.

USPA keeps reports confidential by following the procedures included in this section. The integrity and effectiveness of the reporting system rely on each USPA official following USPA's procedures precisely as outlined.

C. Submission and Disposal of Incident Reports

USPA follows strict operating procedures to maintain the confidentiality of reports and protect the integrity of the incident-reporting system. If possible, the reporting party should use the online submission form at uspa.org/ir, but may also print or type the report and send it to USPA Headquarters.

USPA maintains only the information that identifies trends for USPA and the skydiving industry. USPA removes dates, locations and names of involved parties and enters the remaining information into a database, then destroys the submitted reports.

USPA may publish a brief synopsis of the report in Parachutist, excluding the date, specific location and names of anyone involved.

D. The Incident Reporting Form

You can ensure that USPA receives the most accurate and useful data by providing detailed information in your incident report and by specifying the type of injury (if one) that occurred. Completing the narrative area, including all factors that led to the incident, helps USPA produce an accurate summary. If filing a report of a non-fatal incident that caused injury, include the prognosis for the jumper's recovery.

E. USPA Policy Regarding Privileged Information

The success of USPA's safety-reporting program depends upon the free exchange of information between field reporters and USPA Headquarters. If reporting officials believe that the information will be used only for statistical and educational purposes and that the reports themselves will not be released to third parties, the reporting system will continue to serve the best interests of the membership. If, on the other hand, this privileged information is released to third parties for whatever reason, USPA will lose the trust of the field reporters and, with it, valuable safety-generating data.

USPA’s policy includes:

• Documents for use only by the reporting party and USPA officials as necessary to enhance safety through education and training.
• All requests by third parties to access such information or documents will be referred to the USPA Executive Director, who, in consultation with the USPA President, will determine the need to refer to counsel.
• Failure to adhere to these procedures will subject the violating USPA member to disciplinary action per Section 1-6 of the USPA Governance Manual.