The woman and the instructor, 44, plunged 9,000 feet to their deaths near Dillingham Airfield yesterday.

They crashed into the yard of a Mokule'ia estate about a mile from the field.

The medical examiner identifed the woman as Margaret Jean Thomas, 18. A friend identified the instructor yesterday as 44-year-old Greg Hunter, an accomplished "tandemaster," scuba diver and inventor of several head-held cameras and other equipment used in sky diving. Hunter had taken many actors, including Patrick Swayze, on sky dives, the friend said.

Emergency Medical Services District Chief Mandy Shiraki said the reserve parachute was out of the parachute pack when the bodies were found, but had not opened.

The woman had received the jump as a Christmas gift, according to police. She and her infant son were visiting a relative here, police said. The gift fulfilled one of the things in life she dreamed of doing, the police report noted.

Federal Aviation Administration investigator Curtis Whaley said the chutists jumped from an aircraft operated by a company called Drop Zone.

Whaley said reserve parachutes contain a device that releases automatically in response to speed, altitude or pressure. The normal routine is to eject the main chute if it is malfunctioning, then open the reserve chute, he said.

Officials with Drop Zone declined comment.

Honolulu police Detective Gary Lahens said neither the pilot nor anyone else who jumped before the couple was aware of the accident until landing in the drop zone at Dillingham Field, Lahens said.

The parachutists fell in a yard on Mahina'ai Street, narrowly missing Fred Chuckovich, who was in the yard.

"He was out in the yard fixing a gate, and heard this loud noise right behind him," said Wagner Carvalho, Chuckovich's son-in-law. "He turned around and there were two people in the yard. They had missed him by about 50 feet. It was pretty ugly, pretty ugly."

"My father-in-law is a tough one," Carvalho said, "but he was pretty shook up, pretty scared."

Seleah Bean was at home next door with her boyfriend, Mitchell Runyon.

"I heard a loud bang and thought it was the front gate slamming," Bean said. She said Carvalho told her later what had happened.

She and Runyon had been planning to give each other a skydiving trip for Christmas, Bean said. Those plans are off. "I will never, ever jump," she said.

Whaley said that when two divers jump from 9,000 feet in tandem and no parachute opens, they could reach a speed of 180 mph before hitting the ground.

Investigators had not been able to find any witnesses who saw the skydivers in the air.

The accident will deeply affect the North Shore aviation community, veteran glider company owner Bill Star said last night.