[Alex T.]

As a parachutist myself, I've left an aircraft at over 120mph and its pretty violent.. leaving one at double that speed wouldn't be nice I assure you..

I always had a mixed feeling about paras: why abandoning a plane that is perfectly functional in such a risky fashion?
I used to fly for a friend with his Pilatus Porter on sunday mornings, I'd start at 6am with the checks to start the engine up at 7ish, dropping parachutists at 8ish and coming back for 3 of 4 more sorties.
I still remember getting on board early, still sipping coffee and with sunglasses on (since most of the saturday nights used to be wild back then), and having these crazy folks shouting in the intercom to "charge" each other before the jump (most of the time I'd switch the intercom off, telling them to tap my shoulder if they needed to tell me something..). I've seen em jump in the craziest fashions (it was common to have one standing on the landing gear wheel before jumping), some of them would also ask me to drop them upside down ("no can't do, now get outta here!") and after all of that I can assure you that I'd jump from a plane only if it was on fire... and then I'd think about it as well...