A skydiver has told of the terrifying moment when his parachute failed during a freefall jump.

A video of the drama shows crowds gasping as it becomes clear that something has gone wrong as parachutist Heitor Fernandes plummets to the ground.

But as his main chute begins to spin around crazily, he manages to release his backup parachute and drift to the ground safely.

Witnesses cheer as Heitor – a lieutenant colonel in Brazil’s Military Firefighters Corps – managed to jettison the faulty chute and deploy the spare.

Relieved witnesses can be heard clapping in delight as Heitor goes on to make a perfect landing.

The drama was filmed in the municipality of Boituva, which boasts one of the largest skydiving centres in Latin America, in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo on 3rd May.

Heitor had been training with colleagues, and he said he communicated with them as soon as he fell into trouble and immediately opened the reserve chute.

Heitor explained: “I was the first to jump from the last aircraft and my parachute had a problem.

“One of the lines was over the parachute and it had no lift, which made me fall very fast.”

He added: “Thank God everything turned out all right!”

He said he and his colleagues had trained intensively on the ground the day before the jump to rehearse what to do in such an emergency.