When his tandem parachute and reserve chute failed and Tyler Nii was plunged into the cold depths of Lake Wakatipu, he should have been protected by his life jacket, or saved by rescuers.
Neither happened.
The life jacket would not inflate and the emergency plan deployed by operators NZONE had rescuers 30 minutes away in Queenstown.
It can take less than five minutes for someone to drown from cold shock when the water temperature is about 10 degrees Celsius, as Lake Wakatipu was on that day in January 2018.
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Californian tennis coach Tyler Nii died while tandem skydiving in Queenstown in 2018.
A nearby helicopter pilot heard the emergency call from the company and took the neighbouring Cecil Peak Station manager and crew arrived to their boat.
They rescued tandem master James Starvo about 13 minutes after the pair entered the water. Despite extensive searches Nii was never found.
A new report into the accident by the Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) wants gaps in the rules governing the use of life jackets and adequate emergency response plans are to be reviewed.
However, it has provided no comfort to Niis distraught family his brother, Kevin, said from the United States on Thursday.
All I can say is that this entire process has been incredibly frustrating and unhelpful in any meaningful way.
Nii, a 27-year-old tennis coach from California, was on the second day of a two-week holiday in New Zealand in 2018 when he went tandem skydiving with NZONE in Queenstown.
The report details a series of failures on the day Nii jumped, including line twists in the main parachute, and the reserve chute failing to deploy.
The double malfunction was considered rare.
Australian data showed six double malfunctions from almost 2 millions tandem jumps in 12 years. No fatalities resulted.
There was no comparable data kept by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in New Zealand, the report says.
NZONE reported this was its first double malfunction and its first unintended water landing.
The commission found packing of the main parachute had likely led to the twisted ropes, but no definitive explanation was reached for either chute.
The search for Tyler Nii after his tandem parachute crashed into Lake Wakatipu, Queenstown, in 2018.
NZONE had since employed an independent parachute technician and made several improvements to its packing operations.
The report found unsuitable life jackets have been used in parachuting in New Zealand and that the standards for life jackets referenced in Civil Aviation Rules were related to those worn in aeroplanes.
TAIC chief investigator of accidents Harald Hendel said the commission never recovered the riders life jacket and could not conclusively determine why it only partially inflated.
However, gaps in those rules needed to be closed also.
A key issue in Niis death was that the water emergency response plan of operator NZONE did not regard the anticipated time people could survive in cold water, Hendel said.
NZONE has since provided its own rescue vessel at the aerodrome.
Now TAIC wants the Ministry of Transport, CAA and New Zealands two Parachute Recreation Organisations work to improve the rules but also appealed to all skydivers to consider their own risk.
Accidental landings in water are possible and riskier than you might think, so its vital that you practice doing it, Hendel said.
CAA deputy chief executive Dean Winter said the organisation would look at the rules with the Ministry of Transport and was working with the parachute sector to improve occurrence reporting, as recommended in the report.
Since 2012 there have been 461,546 commercial parachute jumps in New Zealand, with the January 2018 accident the sole recorded fatality on a tandem jump, he said.
Brothers Kevin and Tyler Nii at Kevin’s wedding.
Kevin Nii has previously said the family had found the New Zealand investigation system secretive, ineffective and hostile to victims.
They have been frustrated at what they believe is a lack of accountability.
The CAA had one year to prosecute and chose not to following consultation with Crown solicitors.
Winter said the decision not to lay charges over this accident was correct decision.
We found no evidence of a breach of the Civil Aviation Act, the Civil Aviation Rules, or the Health and Safety at Work Act, nor did we believe such a prosecution would have been in the public interest.
In a short statement, an NZONE Skydive spokesman welcomed the reports recommendations for reviews and revisions by the Secretary for Transport and the Director of Civil Aviation.
NZONE Skydive has full confidence in its operational and safety procedures, he said.
The company would like to once again like to extend its deepest condolences to the family and friends of Tyler Nii.
