A very large student parachute with a medium weight jumper will descend at a rate of 10-15 feet per second when allowed to fly forward with no control input (full flight). However, in order to land safely and softly a jumper will flare the canopy just like an airplane. Decent rate under an open and properly functioning parachute can vary widely depending on the size of the parachute, weight of the jumper, and attitude of the wing among other factors. If you jump off a skyscraper, your body ought to speed up by 10 meters per second (32ft per second) every single second you're falling. We call that an acceleration of 10 meters per second per second (or 10 meters per second squared, for short, and write it like this: 10m/s/s or 10m/s 2). If you were high enough off the ground, then after about a minute and a half (let's say 100 seconds), you'd theoretically be falling at about 1000 meters per second (3600km/h or 2200 mph), which is about as fast as the fastest jet fighters have ever flown! In practice, that simply doesn't happen. A parachute landing fall (PLF) is a safety technique that allows a parachutist to land safely and without injury. The technique is performed by paratroopers and novice recreational parachutists when using round parachutes deployed by static line. While landing under a parachute canopy, the jumper's feet strike the ground first and, immediately, he throws himself sideways to distribute the landing shock sequentially along five points of body contact with the ground: 1  the balls of the feet. Up to 60 seconds of freefall and 5 to 7 minutes under the parachute. The square ram-air parachutes of today allow landings that are the equivalent to hopping off a chair. Depending on the wind conditions at the time you jump, you may land with a gentle standup landing or an equally gentle butt-slide landing.  You have to keep that you have to think fast. If you fall out at 12,000 feet (about 2 miles up), you only have about 60 seconds before you hit the ground. In free fall, you fall at about 125 miles per hour (mph) if you have your arms and legs extended, and at that speed you will travel about 12,000 feet in one minute. The first thing to do is to look for a body of water.  As the skydiver is falling, the force of gravity is pulling the skydiver and their parachute towards the earth. The force of gravity can make an object fall very fast! The parachute slows the skydiver down because it causes air resistance, or drag force. The air pushes the parachute back up, and creates a force opposite to the force of gravity, slowing the skydiver down. As the skydiver falls slowly to the earth, these push and pull forces are nearly in balance. As the skydiver falls, the forces of gravity. and drag are nearly in balance (SEED, 2006b). In the sport of skydiving, a person jumps out of an airplane from a very high altitude, flies through the air, and releases a parachute to help them fall safely to the ground, as shown in Figure 1. Another reference on the web site puts the landing speed of an average skydiver at 14 miles per hour (or about 7 meters per second). At 7 meters per second you would cover the remaining 358 meters in about 51 seconds for a total of 54 seconds, which is slower than what you said.  How a parachute works. There are 2 forces at work when a parachute descends. The force of gravity pulls an object to the earth. It causes elevated objects to fall from their place. If however, the object is attached to a parachute, an upward drag force is exerted on the object as well. This is because there is a certain level of air resistance against a parachute’s canopy, and this slows down the objects fall. As the skydiver is falling, the force of gravity is pulling the person and his or her parachute toward the earth. The force of gravity can make an object fall very fast ! The parachute slows the skydiver down because it causes air resistance, or drag force. The air pushes the parachute back up and creates a force opposite to the force of gravity. As the skydiver falls, these push and pull forces are nearly in balance.*. Background. In the sport of skydiving, a person jumps out of an airplane from a very high altitude, falls through the air, and releases a parachute to help the skydiver slow his or her way down and land safely on the ground.
http://www.answers.com/Q/How_fast_does_a_human_fall_with_the_parachute_open http://www.explainthatstuff.com/how-parachutes-work.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parachute_landing_fall http://www.skyjump.com/tandemjumping http://adventure.howstuffworks.com/question729.htm http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/Aero_p017.shtml http://www.greenharbor.com/fffolder/questions.html http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/print_project_1312_57 http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bring-science-home-parachute/
how fast can a parachutist land