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The company that supervised a skydive in which two men plunged to their deaths has a tragic history, with six fatalities in the past 16 years.
Deadly Sydney skydives:
- 2017: A man in his 60s and another in his 20s die during a tandem jump in July
- 2012: A 27-year-old man dies in July, while a man in his 30s is killed in December
- 2001: Two men plunge to their death on the same July day, in unrelated incidents
Sydney Skydivers cancelled its jumps on Sunday out of respect for a "highly experienced" 63-year-old instructor and a 29-year-old Singaporean, who died on Saturday.
The pair jumped in tandem, with GoPro camera vision from the plane capturing their harrowing final moments as they waited to leap over Picton, about 90 kilometres south-west of the CBD.
The ABC understands their bodies were discovered by a family, who arrived home to find them dead in their driveway, about 1km from where the men were supposed to land.
These are not the first deaths under Sydney Skydivers' watch.
Photo:
This Singaporean man's final moments were captured on video in the plane. (Picture: Supplied)
Five years ago, two men died in a similar location — a 27-year-old man was killed in July while a man in his 30s died in December.
In 2001 another two men died on the same day.
Remarkably, police were attending the first incident when the second one happened right in front of them.
'Sometimes accidents do happen'
Sydney Skydivers took to social media to apologise for the latest fatalities.
In a Facebook post on Sunday morning, the company said the younger man was completing his first ever tandem jump.
"This is the first fatality involving a first orientation Tandem skydive the company has had in over 40 years of operation and is an extremely rare incident," they said.
"The particular skydive the two men were undertaking was not especially challenging for a highly experienced instructor, who had done nearly 10,000 skydives and had nearly 30 years experience in the sport.
"The jump was from normal height and it is not yet clear what occurred."
'We didn't know what had happened'
Sydney Skydivers website describes its services as a "once in a lifetime experience" online, and claims that "safety always comes first, fun comes in a close second".
ABC News spoke to a person, who did not want to be identified, who dived in the same group as the men who died.
"After we finished our dive, all the instructors got called into a big group," they said.
"When we arrived on the ground we didn't know what had happened.
"I think they must have dived after me."
Police investigations at the scene continued into the night.
Topics: death, disasters-and-accidents, police, picton-2571, wilton-2571
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