Written by Koppel Solomon, Mee Loft Rigging

Over the last year, multiple actively used rigs have arrived at the loft with long-overdue Service Bulletins still outstanding — systems that had recently passed through the hands of qualified Packer As and Riggers. These weren’t forgotten closet queens. They were current, actively jumped rigs with easily identifiable Service Bulletins left unaddressed.

The examples are not edge cases: an RSL lacking the required markings on an Infinity; a Wings Boost MARD lanyard that was never relocated in accordance with manufacturer instructions; and an AAD cutter relocation left undone — 21 years after the bulletin was published. Each one straightforward. Each one something that should have been caught during a routine inspection.

Beneath all of this lies a simple truth: there is a fundamental difference between packing canopies and inspecting a system.

A Service Bulletin is a manufacturer’s way of saying, "We found something that needs fixing and here’s how to fix it". It is not a suggestion. It describes a specific safety or performance issue and provides the approved field remedy.

Manufacturers issue them; APF promulgates them; and riggers and packers are the last line in ensuring they are acted on. Some are minor updates; others are urgent, issued when a defect or oversight has the potential to become dangerous if left unresolved.

The consequences of ignoring one can be fatal. Every major manufacturer has a history of issued service bulletins, and reading through them tells you a great deal about their design evolution and their willingness to respond to safety concerns. That history exists because the industry takes these documents seriously — or is supposed to.

The core of a proper equipment inspection is identification: knowing exactly what you’re dealing with. That means every time a Packer or Rigger inspects a system, they should be cross-referencing against the manufacturer’s current Service Bulletin and Product Information Notice list before anything else.

We can’t put an exact number on how often this occurs, but it has happened often enough that we are no longer surprised when we find gear with overdue updates outstanding.

The pattern behind missed bulletins almost always traces back to the same two skipped steps: identification and confirmation — identifying the gear and confirming the applicable manuals and any bulletins in effect. These are not complex or difficult steps. Put simply, they are the foundation of the inspection process, and when they are skipped or overlooked, everything that follows is unreliable. What makes the trend truly troubling is how many qualified hands have touched these rigs without action being taken.

This isn’t a problem isolated to newcomers or low-volume packers — it is an industry-wide drift across experience levels. The issue appears to be systemic, not just the odd individual.

Where a Service Bulletin goes unactioned, the risk is not hypothetical. A reserve pilot chute that hesitates. An RSL that doesn’t function as designed. The difference between a system that is compliant and one that isn’t can be measured in fractions of a second — and those fractions can be critical.

This is not an abstract concept confined to on paper. Every rigger has seen the chain of near misses that precede an incident. Sometimes those chains are broken in time, but not always. Small lapses in processes accumulate over time. Every unchecked Service Bulletin adds another hole in the Swiss cheese, and it is rarely a single dramatic failure that causes an accident; rather, it is the quiet erosion of the safety margin over time.

The mechanism behind this erosion over time has a name: normalisation of deviance. Once checking the manufacturer’s documentation becomes something people sometimes do, rather than always do, the drift compounds. What was an occasional shortcut soon becomes the new standard. Over time, the standard erodes into a habit of skipping steps.

The solution is not complex. Service Bulletins are not hidden, arcane or secret documents. The process for finding and applying them is clear. What is required is discipline: a deliberate, documented inspection process that treats identification and verification as non-negotiable steps, not optional extras.

That’s it. The discipline lives in doing it every time, without exception.

Modern parachute systems are remarkable pieces of engineering — precise, refined and built on decades of accumulated knowledge. A Service Bulletin isn’t a criticism of that engineering; it’s the continuation of it. If things can be made better or safer, the only question worth asking is: why wouldn’t you?

Take a moment today as a fun jumper, rigger or packer. Visit the websites for the equipment you jump or handle. Read the manuals. Check the Service Bulletins page. There’s always a chance you’ll find something you didn’t already know.

Our job as riggers is straightforward: return a system that meets the manufacturer’s requirements in every respect. The right mindset is to approach each rig assuming something may need attention — and to look actively until you’re satisfied nothing does. That diligence is what closes the gaps.

It’s what keeps the holes from lining up.

Best Practice:

1) Identify the system in front of you: manufacturer, model, serial number.

2) Cross-reference against the manufacturer's current Service Bulletin and Product Information Notice list.

3) Confirm compliance before the rig leaves your hands.

Thank you to Koppel Solomon for this article.

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