Would it be possible to execute a jump from high altitude and land into another plane flying at a lower altitude?
How difficult would this be? (matching the airplane’s speed below you, etc)
Has it been attempted?
The trick is to have the lower plane descending at the same speed & angle as the skydiver. That is also the hard part.
Need to stay out of the jet blast or propellers.
I seem to remember a story, movie, TV show or actual attempt years ago or I dreamed it.
Several videos online of people doing exactly this.
I think it was James Bond.
HALO stand for High Altitude Low Opening, implying that, after free falling for a while, you deploy the chute. I don’t see why you couldn’t rendezvous with an airplane that was descending at your free fall speed, but you’re not going to do it with an open chute.
If the target aircraft is descending on the same trajectory as the skydiver, the engines are almost certainly at idle, so jet blast/prop wash wouldn’t be a problem.
As Bear_Nenno indicates, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this done. Here’s one; the target aircraft actually is trailing a small drogue chute, enabling a near-vertical descent at a velocity that’s within the range of what the skydiver can achieve, i.e. 120-180 MPH. The engine appears to be completely shut off; I don’t have audio right now, so I can’t say whether this is for safety or because the engine won’t run in a vertical orientation like that (the crankcase oil isn’t sitting in the sump, so the engine could perhaps be oil-starved if run in this orientation).
This plane kept its engine running, so maybe it was just a safety thing in the first video.
Didn’t they do this, or try to do this, in one of the “Airport” movies?
I think the issue with engines isn’t so much the risk of the engine’s output wake, but rather the danger of the skydiver ending up tangling with the prop or getting inhaled in the jet intake during his/her attempted rendezvous.
No swimmer with half a brain will climb in or out of a power boat while the engine(s) are running. Idle & neutral isn’t good enough.
Same idea.
Now the stunt *I *want to see is somebody with an open parachute doing an aerial rendezvous with a helicopter. The vertical and horizontal speeds are readily compatible. All we have to do is solve the rotor blade-skydiver interaction problem. AKA the aerial Cuisinart. 
I seem to recall some real-world equivalent of the “Skyhook” system used in Dark Knight, where a parachute was intended to be snagged by a device on a lower plane and reel in… probably cargo, not a human sliced into deli ham by the harness straps. Theoretical or real? Not sure.
ETA - perhaps this was the system used to capture the film canisters from the early Keyhole satellites, which ejected the canister for fall and parachute into the atmosphere, and CIA/NRO planes snagged them from the air. Talk about catching an egg on a plate…
Those people, both of them, are fucking insane! :eek:
There was a system to snag a person off the ground. They’d have a harness with a line attached and, I think, a balloon to get the line to altitude. An aircraft would come by and snag the line, yank them into the air and reel them into the aircraft. I can’t think of the name right now, I’ll try to find it later.
Something like that could probably work with a person in a parachute like the keyhole film, in theory.
ETA: It actually was called Skyhook. I haven’t seen Dark Knight so I don’t know how similar it is, but I guess they used the name of the real thing?
https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2012-featured-story-archive/skyhook.html
I thought they tried to lower a new pilot through the hole in the plane via a helicopter and a winch, the the stricken plane flying as slow as possible. I believe it ended badly.
In 1964 during a ‘Gabriel’ demonstration for VIP’s, General Jumping Joe Stilwell was going to ride that system. All was fine until he was about 1.5 feet in the air when the line lock on the nose of the aircraft cut the line because of a malfunction ( we learned latter ) and the General did a perfect butt plop back into the dust.
One really pissed General. Want a redo RIGHT NOW but it was not possible.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Warren_Stilwell,_Jr.
It only took 2 attempts for me to do it right in GTA3 San Andreas. Then the murdering of everyone on board took a few more attempts.
Damn handy the failure occurred at 1.5 feet and not 150 or 1500 feet. Even 50 feet woulda been awkward bordering on fatal.
Yeah, not sure how well he would bounce but he did look like a tough dude.
Things I heard around that time in the ARMY.
The gizmo on the nose either worked or chopped the line first hit so none I heard about was cut loose in the first bit.
The one guy I knew about was said to have been cut lose when they were winching him in. Not sure if it was the hook or something at the winch, I heard conflicting stories.
I never saw anyone wear a parachute while doing this and I wondered why?
Hooking up or rigging up for non-jump qualified or civilian people was too dangerous & accidental deployment would be considered bad by the poor guy wearing it I would think.
There was always a long list to get to be the one to make the ride. I did not bother to sign up, did not think I was going to be there long enough to get a turn.
At the time I was dumb nuff to have done it if I had the chance. I have learned better with lots of age… 
I went on every test flight that I could get on. Yes, if the pilot was OK with it and you had a place to sit, you could go. Now some of those were eventful. 
Here are some youtube videos of the Fulton Recovery System.
Here are some real tests with people (and a sheep). The initial jolt doesn’t look so bad. The people are sort of gently lifted up about ten feet… then shoot off like a damn rocket! It must be from the stretch of the rope.
Apparently John Wayne aided in an extraction via the Fulton system and James Bond did it with a pretty woman nestled gently in his arms.
There’s a discussion in the comment section here. The son of the guy that died posted in the comments asking for info. The co-pilot from that pickup and engineer who fixed the problem afterward replied.
Apparently it was a worn bushing on a bolt that allowed the arm 1/4 inch play which opened a gap. The rope got in that gap and pulled him off the ground then slipped back where it was supposed to be. But the system wasn’t meant to grab a line with a weight on it, it was meant to grab the line itself and secure it before the person was lifted. The extra weight from the rope being momentarily snagged and lifting him off the ground caused it to fail.
Well, that clears it up in my mind then. Thanks for finding that.