# An airman dies in rappelling accident at Texas college football game **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 19, 2026, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967 "2026-10-19T14:55:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967/1 "2026-10-19T14:55:27Z")
Rappelling and fast-roping have been taught for decades. I took lessons in rappelling at a summer Outward Bound back packing course in college. It’s a very useful skill in back packing and climbing. I enjoyed basic rock climbing for several years. I was always with a small group of climbers. Isn’t basic rappelling taught in boot camp? The military’s elite troops fast-rope. I wonder what could have gone wrong? Equipment failure? Patterson was an instructor. This was a demonstration for the public. It wasn’t a extreme stunt. Imho > **[Airman who died in rappelling accident at Texas college football game identified](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/19/airman-died-rappelling-accident-texas-football-game)** > > US military says Tech Sgt Ian Patterson was killed after he fell from rafters at University of Texas at San Antonio game > [@](#): > > An investigation was under way after Patterson’s death into what led up to his fall during a rappelling demonstration at UTSA’s annual Salute to Armed Forces and Veterans game against Navy. > > A video of the fall that was posted on social media showed Patterson, in combat fatigues, quickly descending to the ground feet first. The fall occurred with fans in the stands and a band assembled nearby on the field. > **[U.S. service member dies after rappelling incident at UT San Antonio football...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-air-force-member-dies-injury-ut-san-antonio-football-stadium/)** > > A service member was injured and later died after falling while rappelling from the ceiling of the University of Texas at San Antonio football stadium on Saturday. ---
**Author:** ![Monty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/monty/32/47_2.png) [@Monty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monty)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 3:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967/2 "2026-10-19T15:03:24Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > Isn’t basic rappelling taught in boot camp? It was’t when I went through BCT years ago and as far as I know it’s not part of basic training now. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967/3 "2026-10-19T15:14:26Z")
I deeply sympathize with Patterson’s family. The military will find out what went wrong. This should have been a routine exercise for these 4 experienced airmen. But, accidents can happen to anyone. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967/4 "2026-10-19T15:25:32Z")
Here’s the local coverage. This should be a gift link, but who knows. [Service member dies after falling from Alamodome rafters in skills demo before UTSA game](https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/air-force-service-member-dies-fall-alamodome-utsa-22482478.php?utm_source=marketing&utm_medium=copy-url-link&utm_campaign=article-share&hash=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZXhwcmVzc25ld3MuY29tL25ld3MvYXJ0aWNsZS9haXItZm9yY2Utc2VydmljZS1tZW1iZXItZGllcy1mYWxsLWFsYW1vZG9tZS11dHNhLTIyNDgyNDc4LnBocA%3D%3D&time=MTc5MjQyMzMyMTY0Mw%3D%3D&rid=Njg5NzlhMmQtMmZhMy00YTAwLWFmYTktMjAzOGNkYjg4MDcw&sharecount=MQ%3D%3D) ETA: He was identified later: > The airman who [died after falling from the Alamodome rafters](https://www.expressnews.com/news/article/air-force-service-member-dies-fall-alamodome-utsa-22482478.php) Saturday night was Tech. Sgt. Ian Patterson, a decorated airman from Fort Stewart, Ga. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967/5 "2026-10-19T15:43:09Z")
Accidents can happen those who are trained and fit, of course. I’m wondering if he checked his carabiner was fully clipped or something. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967/6 "2026-10-19T16:32:40Z")
Infrantry training at Ft Benning They start learning on a short wall before trying the tower. The airmen were attempting a much more advanced decent. [![](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/0Ew31zWFUto/hqdefault.jpg "US Army Fort Benning Infantry OSUT Basic Training Eagle Tower Rappel 2020") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ew31zWFUto) ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967/7 "2026-10-19T16:52:17Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > The airmen were attempting a much more advanced decent. Usually, airmen don’t receive Infantry training at any fort, because they’re not soldiers. But it’s been literally 45 years since my brief sojourn at Lackland AFB, so who knows what the Air Force Basic Military Training course looks like now. My nephew is a fairly new airman. If I have the chance and remember, I’ll ask. Still, my suspicion is that rapelling isn’t part of standard Air Force basic training, but may be part of occupation-based technical school training for certain specialities, and this team of airmen may have been part of one of those career fields. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967/8 "2026-10-19T17:02:04Z")
Was the game cancelled? ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967/9 "2026-10-19T17:02:46Z")
Not at all. It started minutes later. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967/10 "2026-10-19T17:08:16Z")
My mistake-It was a college game _in Texas_. ---
**Author:** ![Great\_Antibob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47c2d/32.png) [@Great\_Antibob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Great_Antibob)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967/11 "2026-10-19T17:17:46Z")
It’s not that he was obviously dead at the scene and they just kept going despite a corpse on the field. Injuries happen at football games and not only to players (and not just in Texas) and seeing people carted away to get treated is not uncommon. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967/12 "2026-10-19T17:19:16Z")
He was injured and died hours later. And of course the game would have been canceled because of such an injury in… what state? 🧐 ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967/13 "2026-10-19T17:24:54Z")
Background Information: The late Sergeant’s job was **[Tactical air control party - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_air_control_party)**. Which is sorta kinda Special Forces adjacent USAF-style. As briefly mentioned in the CBS article the OP cited, these folks live and work directly with the Army and (occasionally) USMC. Here’s the rest of the story. … They serve as a real-time embedded liaison between Army troops in the field in combat and the air support assets who’re available to watch over and assist the Army in accomplishing their mission. Which assistance usually consists of promptly and thoroughly blowing up whatever / whoever is shooting at our people. As such, they get a lot of Army-style training too. Since helicopters are part of everyday Army grunt life now, they all get the same helo-related training Army infantry does. Which includes fast-rope rappel and fixed rope extraction. Depending on the era and the unit they’re assigned to, they’ll also operate Army-style ground vehicles like jeeps, trucks, and APCs modified to carry their specialized commo gear. The ones who work with Airborne units go through Fort Benning parachute school alongside the Army folks. Back in my era a TACP included a pilot- or navigator-rated officer with tactical jet experience, a senior Sergeant like Patterson, and a junior enlisted assistant / apprentice. I did that job for 3 years. The three of us lived and worked w the Army and did whatever shit they did. Be that fun, dangerous, or just boring and uncomfortable. In my case my team did not work with any Airborne or SF (Green Beret) units so we missed out on that fun training. But we did everything else just like the grunts. A number of years ago (1990s?) USAF quit assigning pilots / navs to TACPs. Ever since then the senior sergeant is the team leader. Patterson was an instructor at the TACP school. But if he hadn’t been an instructor, he’d have been, and doubtless was for some years, a TACP team leader. ETA: @Chefguy just below nailed it in short form. As to this event: There are a bunch of ways something could have failed him. There will of course be an investigation, but USAF is unlikely to bother publicizing the results. We may well know in a couple / few days. We may never know. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967/14 "2026-10-19T17:26:00Z")
> [@gnoitall](#): > > Still, my suspicion is that rapelling isn’t part of standard Air Force basic training, but may be part of occupation-based technical school training for certain specialities, The air force has had this type of specialty going back at least to Vietnam with the MAC-V/SOG units, and more recently AFSOC. These are the Air Force equivalents of the better-known SEALs and Green Beret units. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967/15 "2026-10-19T17:28:06Z")
> [@Great\_Antibob](#): > > Injuries happen at football games and not only to players (and not just in Texas) and seeing people carted away to get treated is not uncommon. Traumatic injuries to players, such as neck injuries, which lead to the game being stopped for 10 to 20 minutes while the medical team attends to the player, before transporting him off the field, nearly never lead to cancellations. The crowd is quiet, the players are stunned, and after the player is off the field, play nearly always resumes. The only time I can recall that an on-field medical emergency led to an outright cancellation of a football game was in 2023, when [Damar Hamlin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damar_Hamlin#In-game_collapse)’s heart actually stopped due to a blow to the chest, and he had to be revived on the field. The game was suspended, and as it was late in the season, and the outcome of the game would have had no bearing on the playoffs, it was never resumed. ---
**Author:** ![CoolHandCox](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/coolhandcox/32/16233_2.png) [@CoolHandCox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CoolHandCox)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967/16 "2026-10-19T17:28:14Z")
I had a friend at the game who watched it happen live. His group assumed the guy died then and there. My friend described a “chilling vibe” throughout the stadium. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967/17 "2026-10-19T17:31:58Z")
I sort of figured it wasn’t taught in Basic Training, but in a later school. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967/18 "2026-10-19T17:45:20Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Which includes fast-rope rappel Far be it from me to be the guy who learned it 20 minutes ago questioning the guy who lived it, but… Last night I was reading FB comments about this on military-related pages, and dozens of people were complaining about it being called fast rope when it wasn’t (according to them) fast rope. According to these threads, “fast rope” is sliding down a rope by hand while wearing thick, single-use leather gloves and typically is done from a height of around 50 feet or so, with 100 feet being extremely high for that method (the stadium was from around 180 feet). So “fast rope” wouldn’t be a type of rappelling? ---
**Author:** ![gnoitall](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bb73d2/32.png) [@gnoitall](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gnoitall)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967/19 "2026-10-19T17:59:17Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > So “fast rope” wouldn’t be a type of rappelling? Wikipedia draws a distiction between rapelling and fast-rope descent. > **[Fast-roping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-roping)** > > Fast-roping is a technique for descending a thick rope, allowing troops to deploy from a helicopter in places where the aircraft cannot touch down. The person holds onto the rope with gloved hands (with or without using their feet) and slides down it. Several people can slide down the same rope simultaneously, provided that there is a gap of about 3 metres (10 ft) between them, so that each one has time to get out of the way when they reach the ground. Fast roping is quicker than abseiling (rappe... > Fast roping is quicker than [abseiling (rappelling)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abseiling "Abseiling"), although more dangerous,[[1]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast-roping#cite_note-marinesjournal-1) particularly if the person is carrying a heavy load, because the rope is not attached to them with a [descender](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climbing_equipment#Descenders "Climbing equipment"). Whether you consider Wikipedia’s take on the issue to be correct or definitive is up to you. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2026, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967/20 "2026-10-19T18:22:01Z")
Thanks for the background information @Chefguy and @LSLGuy [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/an-airman-dies-in-rappelling-accident-at-texas-college-football-game/1033967.md?page=2)