City commissioners will decide skydiving company’s fate after airport board suggests waiting

Hurry up and wait.

Paul Tucker, who along with his wife Sherri Young owns Adventure Skydive Center LLC, has been waiting since a Feb. 18 fatal skydiving accident at Sallisaw Municipal Airport for reports from investigative agencies that are expected to determine why Heather Glasgow of Poteau died on her first solo jump.

Now, the Sallisaw Airport Advisory Board (SAAB) is also waiting to receive official documentation so that the findings can be reviewed by an expert in skydiving procedures, which may clear the way for Adventure Skydive Center to resume operations that have been suspended for the past two months.

It appears they may be waiting several more months before toxicology and medical examiner reports are final, and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) completes its investigation.

Until those reports are finalized, the SAAB does not want Adventure Skydive Center parachutists in the skies over Sallisaw.

During a special meeting on Thursday, the SAAB unanimously passed a recommendation to City Manager Keith Skelton “that no action be taken until investigative reports are returned, and until such time as we’ve had to consult somebody extremely familiar with these sorts of operations to make [Tucker’s] permit conditioned upon our ordinances, and upon any other conditions that would lend safety to the operations.”

The future of skydiving in Sallisaw now awaits a decision by the Board of City Commissioners at its May 8 meeting.

“I will take this recommendation, I will place an item on the next board meeting [agenda] in May. I will tell them how I feel about it and my thoughts, and then we’ll get their opinion, whether they want to either override me or go along with this recommendation,” Skelton explained to SAAB members Gary Schaefer, Frank Sullivan, Beko Rivera, Devin Guthrie and Mike Meece.

Glasgow, 44, was making her first solo jump when a witness said he saw her spinning uncontrollably and unable to recover before she struck the ground.

Tucker and Adventure Skydive Center have cooperated with the Sallisaw Police Department and FAA to determine the cause of the accident.

Glasgow, a mother of two children, was transported to Northeastern Health Systems Sequoyah for treatment. She died from injuries sustained in the fall about four hours later.

“The management and staff of Adventure Skydive Center are in shock by this accident, and we express our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of Heather,” Tucker said in a prepared statement in the wake of the fatality. “Heather had made a tandem skydive six weeks before her solo jump, and we had come to know her as an eager and energetic, well-liked person. We are deeply saddened by this tragedy, and mourn her passing.”

Why a special meeting?

At Thursday’s special meeting, Skelton set the stage for SAAB deliberations.

“This was brought about by the unfortunate accident that we had in February,” the city manager said. “A couple of days after the accident happened, I did revoke the permit of the skydiving operation until further notice. According to [city] ordinances, I’m allowed to revoke any permit like that as long as I feel it’s in the best interest of the city and the public safety, as well. As of right now, the permit is expired, so it would have to be renewed. Also, Mr. Tucker’s lease on the hangar does expire on June 30, as well.

“I’m at the point that I’ve got to make a decision to allow Mr. Tucker to resume operations or make a decision that it’s not in the best interest of the city to resume skydiving operations at the airport at this time,” Skelton said.

While final reports from the FAA, U.S. Parachute Association and Oklahoma Medical Examiner’s Office are pending, Skelton said that as far as the city is concerned, SPD has completed its investigation and “everything is final as far as what we can do.”

Tucker told the board he has talked with FAA officials, and that a final report is now underway, but admitted it “might be six to nine months.” He also said “it may be 10 months” to receive toxicology reports.

Sullivan, who made the motion to recommend no action be taken until the investigative reports are received and reviewed, told his fellow board members Thursday that there should not be a rush to reinstate Adventure Skydive Center, and should operations resume, that stringent safeguards should be expected.

“I think it’s premature. I think we need the investigative reports from the investigative bodies [before any action is considered],” Sullivan said. “I would think, Mr. Skelton, that maybe your permit has conditions, but I think probably somebody that’s very sophisticated with these kind of operations, after the reports come in before we would regrant a permit, I would think you would want a permit with conditions, and I think [Tucker] needs very close monitoring. I think there needs to be really, really tight controls on the permits, and that would only be after favorable reports.

“If the FAA cites any regulatory violations — we wouldn’t know that at this point in time; we don’t have an official report from them. If you were to grant them a new permit, since this one is expired, and then a report came back from the FAA that cited regulatory violations, then we’d be right back in the middle of the problem.”

Skelton admitted such circumstances could “put us in a liability situation.”

“I would think so if we were permitting operations before we had a result from a regulatory agency, they cited violations and something else happens in the meantime, then someone’s gonna look straight at us and say, ‘Why did you let them operate before you had a report back from the FAA?’ That’s my first thought, is that maybe making the decision might be premature,” Sullivan said. The USPA is also conducting an investigation, which is superseded by the FAA.

“I think that goes in line with the FAA portion of it,” Rivera said. “We’re discussing an item that we don’t have the final determinations from the governing body, and if the FAA decides there is no fault there, then they default to the USPA for their findings.”

Tucker said at least one phase of the investigation is complete. He told the SAAB that the FAA’s Flight Standards District Offices (FSDO) in Oklahoma City is handling the investigation, and “he’s cleared our equipment. He said he found no violations.”

Safety as a priority

“The other side of this question has to deal with safety. No matter what we permit out there at the airport, we have to make sure that everything is done in a safe manner,” Skelton told the SAAB.

Tucker agreed. “We run one of the safest drop zones around; we’ve jumped at them all. Safety is No. 1 with us,” Tucker said. “The reason Sherri and I picked Sallisaw is because of all the open fields. It is actually safer than Clarksville [and] Fayetteville.”

Then Tucker defended the training provided to jumpers by Adventure Skydive Center instructors, all of whom he said are USPA-certified. “Our skydivers don’t make bad decisions.”

But on Feb. 18, two separate but consecutive instances occurred that gave SAAB members reason to pause.

On the day of the accident, the jumper immediately before Glasgow departed the plane early and was outside the primary drop zone. He had to be redirected to a secondary drop zone, and landed safely.

“We’ve only had maybe two or three,” Tucker said of such incidents of jumpers parachuting outside the drop zone. “It was his first [solo] jump as well.”

When asked about instances of injuries associated with Adventure Skydive Center, Tucker recalled an isolated instance that resulted in “just a broken leg. A guy came in [and] landed what he called ‘funny,’ and broke his leg. He had over actually 300 jumps.”

Tom Hanning, Sallisaw Municipal Airport fixed base operator and designated manager of the airport, told the SAAB that other than an incident in which too many people were jammed into the small airport terminal during the Adventure Skydive Center grand opening, Tucker’s company has worked well with the airport.

Then he revealed that there was what appeared to be an isolated incident in which airport staff noticed a smell of alcohol on a patron.

But Tucker assured the SAAB that alcohol is not tolerated.

“If I see alcohol, they don’t come back. No alcohol gets consumed out there, not by us, not by anybody we know of. We will ask them to leave,” Tucker said.

Details of the fatal jump

The SAAB discussed at length the circumstances of Glasgow’s fatal jump. Tucker countered that the video of Glasgow’s jump was reviewed by two experts in parachute safety, and said “they both looked at the video and said, ‘Man, that is just textbook’.”

Tucker then told the SAAB that Glasgow may have had a seizure during her jump.

“Up until the time that she (Glasgow) passed out, she was a model student,” Tucker said, and that she had completed a tandem jump “a couple of months before” her solo jump. Tucker said Glasgow also completed a first-jump course, which is “about a four or five-hour course, learning about everything that could go wrong. It was about a month before she was able to make her first jump. She was the one on fire, answering every question.”

George Bormann, who works with the airport on behalf of the city, then asked if weather conditions were a factor in not only Glasgow’s death, but the prior jumper who missed the primary drop zone.

According to Bormann, USPA safety regulations require winds not to exceed 14 mph for a first-time jumper. Bormann said he reviewed Mesonet data from the day of the fatal jump, and said it observed sustained winds of 14 mph, with gusts of 2022 mph. Tucker replied that the data he checked from Meteorological Aerodrome Reports (METAR), which provides weather observations for more than 4,000 airports, indicated 9-13 mph winds at the time of the jumps.

“Would that have been a factor for the other first-time jumper to end up over at Blue Ribbon [Auto Group]? Do you think the wind had any factor on Ms. Glasgow’s jump?”

Tucker said he did not believe wind was a factor in either instance. “Honestly, I think she passed out,” he said of Glasgow.

He told the SAAB about the pre-jump checks Glasgow completed, how the first part of the jump went well and how he was in radio contact with her throughout the jump.

“I was on the radio. I said, ‘Hey, Heather, you look good. Go ahead and head to your playground.’ The playground is where they can go, do some turns, just kinda get staged for getting ready to land. We’re on the radio with them all the time. So, when she started heading toward the playground, I turned around and got No. 1 skydiver on the ground, he landed right behind me. He did a great job. So, she’s about halfway across there, I said, ‘Hey, Heather, you can go ahead and do a little turn if you like.’ So she does a little left turn, and then I said, ‘OK, quit all that playing and get to your playground like I told you to do.’ I turned around, got No. 2 down, since he was going to land off [the primary drop zone].

“When I looked back at her, she’s doing a slow turn. I said, ‘OK, Heather, let’s go back the other way.’ Nothing. I said, ‘Heather, let’s go back the other way.’ Nothing. I said, ‘OK, Heather, let’s go over our emergency procedures.’ Still nothing. She was still turning. It was a slow turn, it wasn’t like some crazy spiral,” Tucker said.

“So, I said, ‘Hey, Heather, let’s go ahead and just pull that red handle,’ because if she wasn’t replying or putting any kind of input, obviously she had some kind of issue. Since she didn’t, it was just a slow spiral all the way down.

“Now I firmly believe if she had hit flat ground, I believe she’d still be with us today. But, she hit the embankment on the ditch,” he said.

Tucker said when Glasgow had descended to about 1,500 feet, he got a good view of her. He said one arm was “just flying in the wind,” while her other arm appeared to be hung in the rigging, which he said initiated the slow turn.

“So when I got over to her, Tyler [Hinkle] and I started doing CPR. I think she had a seizure.”

Tucker explained that on a pre-qualifying questionnaire regarding medical issues, Glasgow did not list any issues. He also said the USPA does not require participants to complete a physical examination prior to jumping.

Is skydiving a benefit?

Sullivan recalled that when the skydiving operation was originally considered, one of the benefits for the airport was exposure.

“Even beyond what the FAA may say about regulations, my question would be, ‘Have we derived any of the benefits that we hoped that we would from the exposure, has it increased ops (operations) enough?” Sullivan posed the questions to the board for consideration. “We were wondering about financially, to a certain extent, but we were also wondering about the number of ops, because that has a bearing on some of the grants we get from the FAA and other benefits that we derive from increased operations, and then the exposure to the public.”

“As far as revenue to the city, the only revenue that we make is the permit fee, which is not that much, and also the hangar rental, which is not that much,” Skelton interjected. “Outside that, it would be fuel sales for the airplanes. So revenue-wise to the city, it’s not that much. Of course the city doesn’t make that much off the airport anyway. We make a small percentage on fuel sales, we get some rental income, things like that. We’re not in the airport business to make money.”

“It’s the indirect benefit that you have to providing an airport to businesses, and people,” Sullivan clarified.

“It’s part of our economic packages that we offer. Having an airport does help us attract businesses. Contrary to what a lot of people think, the airport is beneficial to our community in many ways,” Skelton said.

“Back in 2017 when [the most recent report] was done, [having an airport] was a $6 million total economic impact,” Bormann explained.

Hanning, who has been at the airport about five years, said skydiving is especially popular during the warmer months, but the type of operations rather than the number is what’s important to the FAA.

“The number of operations increases for skydiving on the weekends, Saturday and Sunday. On a busy Saturday, they could have as many as 20 to 30 takeoffs and landings. It is definitely seasonal.

“But it’s not necessarily the number of operations, but the kind of operations,” Hanning said. “Where we see the benefit is when we begin to see, let’s say, multi-engine turbine aircraft come in or corporate jets. It’s the type of operations rather than the total number.”

So is skydiving important to the airport?

“It’s probably negligible, if any, as far as grants,” Hanning determined. “It could potentially have a negative affect if it was not a top-notch, by-the-book operation.”

Then Sullivan examined the impact of “increased exposure to the public, bringing people here to rent space for airplanes to increase our operations, our visibility, the economic benefit for Sallisaw. Do these type of skydiving operations help us in terms of exposure, which is bringing more airplanes to hangar here and stay here?”

Hanning acknowledged that most skydivers are from outside Sallisaw, which offers an indirect impact.

“An educated guess is that a decent amount of their customer clientele is probably going to be a lot of return customers that they have, and those may be from outside of our area. They have a following, if you will,” Hanning said. “As far as direct impact to this city, the people in Sallisaw that have come out and jumped, I can’t give you that number. But it’s my perception that the majority of it is going to be the outlying following that comes and participates.”

Bormann concurred. “As far as the economic impact, there’s going to be some indirect economic impact to our community. What that would be would be speculation. There would be some indirect economic impact if they’re buying their gas, stopping at a restaurant, whatever.”

Tucker pointed out that he has had jumpers from Texarkana, Texas, and Joplin, Mo., and that those people stay at area hotels.

Going forward

Skelton outlined a series of options for the board’s consideration prior to the recommendation to take no action.

“We can either cease skydiving activities or, at least, a moratorium until a date certain. So is there a recommendation that we cease skydiving activities and revisit it at a certain date, or maybe even place a moratorium until a date certain, or maybe a moratorium and we revisit the issue six months from now, something like that? I’m just looking for that type of guidance from what the airport board feels would be best for the airport.”

But anything short of giving Adventure Skydive Center the go-ahead to resume operations is a hardship for Tucker.

“That really puts us in a financial strain. You have no idea just what putting us down for two months has done for us,” he told the SAAB.

Skelton reminded Tucker that the airport and city have to consider liability concerns.

“The citizens of Sallisaw own the airport, and we have to look at it from the liability standpoint. Mr. Sullivan made a good point earlier. If we were to allow you to resume operations and something did come out that something was wrong that day, then that kinda puts us in a predicament.

“I think the decision that needs to be made needs to be made in the best interest of the community and of the airport,” Skelton said.

When Guthrie asked Tucker if his organization is jumping anywhere else besides Sallisaw, Tucker said “they’re letting us kinda go every couple of weeks to Siloam Springs.”

Regardless, Sullivan believes strong measures need to be in place should skydiving return to Sallisaw.

“He doesn’t need people that are out of the plane too quick,” Sulllivan said of the jumper who landed outside the primary drop zone. “Those need to be absolutely within his control. People that are out there, as Tom reported to us, that are drinking, and Mr. Tucker tells us, that one reason he came here is because that’s a common problem in other communities.”

While Skelton believes the current ordinance is sufficient, he is open to the possibility of updating it as needed.

“We’re comfortable with our ordinance that we adopted. We completely revamped that ordinance probably three years ago. We’re fairly comfortable with that and the conditions that’s in there,” the city manager said. “But we’d be glad to revisit that ordinance to reference the conditions you just mentioned.”

Skelton told the SAAB the city’s permit “is kind of a generic permit that’s good for anything, whether it’s Tom’s operations, skydiving or whatever else people own out there, but it does reference the ordinance.”

Skelton reminded the board that the city commissioners have the final say whether skydiving returns.

“What you’re doing is just a recommendation. The final decision is going to rest with me, unless I’m overridden by the city council. If the city council directs me to not to reissue it or to reissue it. That’s all we’re asking you is for a recommendation.”

What training entails

According to the Adventure Skydive Center website, the training process begins with a tandem jump with a USPA-certified instructor. “The tandem instructor can give you your first taste of checking your altitude, steering the canopy and answer questions you may have,” the website says. “If you’re still nervous, you can do another until you feel comfortable.”

Next is a comprehensive course that lasts up to six hours. Subsequent classes include reviews of what was learned in previous classes, along with receiving further instruction. During the second through fifth jumps, the website says the student’s “instructor will pull your chute for you as you leave from 4,500 feet. No freefall yet, just canopy time. We want you to learn to fly and control your canopy first. You will have a radio strapped to your helmet, and a coach or instructor will be talking you down until you are ready to do it on your own.”

After five jumps, students depart the airplane from higher altitudes until they reach 10,000 feet, the website says. Graduation day occurs after the 25th jump.

Tucker is a U.S. Army veteran, and is a USPA Instructor Aided Deployment instructor. Young is a FAA senior parachute rigger. Both have made hundreds of skydives, and both have Coach ratings.

According to the USPA, there were 10 skydiving fatalities out of an estimated 3.57 million U.S. jumps in 2021. The number of fatalities in 2021 was the lowest in more than 20 years, according to USPA figures.