Apoorva Lakhia recollects crash landing after his parachute failed to deploy

Mumbai, July 6 (IANS) Director Apoorva Lakhia, who is known for films like ‘Shootout at Lokhandwala’, ‘Haseena Parkar’ and others, once had a nasty fall during his skydiving adventure.

The director recently appeared on the latest episode of Cyrus Broacha’s podcast, and shared the story when his parachute failed to deploy resulting in an injury to his leg.

He said, “So this was in Thailand. What happened was that when you jump off from 14,000 or 16,000 feet and the parachute opens, you have to do a test here. So you have these dongles on both sides, which is like a steering wheel. So first you do left, pull, it turns left. Then you do a right pull, it turns right. Then you do a break where the hood stands. But when I did the left pull, the dongle came out in my hand. So there was no way for me to land”.

He further mentioned, “I would have f****** gone. But I didn't panic because we've been taught not to panic. Plan B is you let go of the original parachute and you take out your reserve. But the problem is that your parachute, which is the original one, is decided on your weight. At that time, I was 100 kgs. So the weight of my parachute was 280 kgs. But the one which was in the spare parachute was like 100 kgs. So I was falling that much faster because my original parachute was as per my weight. Now the parachute, which is the spare parachute, was exactly my weight. So I was falling that much faster. So I fell really fast and I fell onto the ground”.

The director ended with an injured foot but soon recovered.

--IANS

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