Paragliding world hits severe turbulence

A tumultutous last week indeed in the international paragliding community.

After my week in Piedrahita during the lead up to the World Paragliding Championship, as well as beating my personal best, I soaked up the atmosphere of competition pilots flowing into town. Not only that, my trip was being hosted by Steve Ham, the Meet Director at the Worlds. We also got to meet the Safety Director and FAI Steward of the competition, and one of the members of the New Zealand team. The latter being significant for me as I'm from New Zealand.


Returning home to Michigan, I was excited about watching the first days live tracking. It was a gripping race as the world's elite tore through the task at a blistering average speed of 46km/h, flying 152km in under 3 hrs. It put into perspective my personal best from the week before on a day with almost identical conditions, cloudbase, convergence and thermals. I flew 87km along exactly the same route, which took me 3hrs 15 minutes. The comp pilots were flying basically twice as fast.

But then  everything turned to tragedy on the Wdnesday, with the fatal crashes of Franciso Vargas and Eitel von Muhlenbrock at completely different locations, several hours apart. My heart immediately went out to the families of these two experienced competition pilots, and everyone in Piedrahita dealing with the incomprehension, disbelief, loss and grief that must have swept through the tight knit competition teams and paragliding community.

Because I'd been flying the week in both crash locations in very similar conditions - the first around the Pena Negra launch, the second in the Ambes valley near Avila - I felt even more connected with the situation. It was even more chilling because in the week when I flew, one of the pilots in our group had a 50% collapse followed by a twist, which he captured on his helment cam and posted on YouTube below.  This occured in the Ambes valley, close to the second accident site. This was a pretty full on Piedrahita day - my vario registered 8m/s climb rate about the time of the incidents shown in the video.



I couldn't help thinking that this was exactly the sort of incident a DHV 1-2 paraglider like myself and my friend fly, is designed and tested to recover from more or less without pilot input. If the 2-line competition wings cause an incident like the one in the video to become unrecoverable, even in the hands of an experienced pilot with thousands of hours of airtime by quickly producing such high g-forces or undesirable situations (twists, cravats, parachutal stalls) that even throwing the reserve is compromised, then it really is a huge issue for the manufactures of these wings and paragliding in general.  After some further investigation during the week, it appears that both accidents at the worlds were caused by the gliders becoming unrecoverable after frontal collapses with speed bar, and then resulting spins making further recovery impossible. Pilots are already open selling their brand new 2-line competition gliders as a result of these incidents.

The collapses in the video are not full frontal collapses, comparison is admittedly difficult, but it's clear that something went really wrong with paragliding design, certification, and competition in the last few years. There have been hundreds of posts on ParaglidingForum on the question on Safety following the Piedrahita Worlds. Every perspective seems to be fairly represented, including a few of the usual gung-ho 'we all know this is a dangerous sport, accidents will happen variety'. I guess those posters will give up paragliding and take up base jumping soon enough to get that adrenalin that paragliding no longer offers.

Well, we all know it is a dangerous sport, we all insist on doing it for personal reasons. But there is usually a common thread about why people paraglide, and it's generally NOT the pure adrenalin rush and speed thrill thing that base jumpers talk about.  Paragliding pilots almost know nothing else that is so utterly rewarding in so many ways, that takes them so close to the purest essence of what being alive is about. Paragliding is living the dream of a fulfilled life, the dream of soaring and flying. Its not about screaming through the air at high speed and thinking how close you came to killing yourself today.

All that said, there is really something deep distressing and downright wrong when a competitive event results in multiple fatalities. My personal belief is that competitive paragliding took a wrong turn within the last two years, and that it was led by an 'arms race' amoung the major manufacturers devoted to speeding up Open Class gliders as the ultimate goal.  The FAI stopping the worlds after two tasks was the correct response, and a recognition of this wrong turn.  The 2-line, 7.5 - 8 aspect ratio gliders such as the Ozone R11 and the Gin Boomerang 8 have proven to be seductive - with the impression of increased stability, even at high speed and turbulence. This design of glider became essentially the only ones that pilots could win a major competition on in the 2010 season.The fact that they were uncertified except for load tests didn't discourage the elite flying community, who gambled that their superior level of skills and thousands of hours of flying experience would give them the edge.

Interestingly some of the most experienced competition and test pilots swear by these wings, saying they are safe and even more collapse resistant than ever. They have certainly enabled mind-boogling flights during the spring season in Europe. Steve Ham (host and guide of all my Piedrahita trips as well as meet director for the Worlds) had some of the most well reasoned comments, and concluded with "... the Seminar by the test pilots and designers demonstrated that many of the pilots present were flying a wing that gives a strong feeling of security, but which few of them could deal with correctly in the case of a major colapse, either accelerated or trim in unstable air."  Perhaps the problem then is that they appear too safe, and comp pilots are buying them and taking them straight to their next competition, not realizing that you need to be flying 500 hours a year or an skilled acro pilot to recovery from an serious incident when it does happen. 

Even the advertising seeks to bring out the riskier aspects of our sport. (Apologies to single out Gin here)

To be honest, straight lining over the Aletsch glacier in a 6m/s thermal would terrify the shit out of me, and I can't think why any safety minded pilot would really want to take that sort of risk, regardless of what their flying goals were. That's the sort of thing you do maybe in a high performance sailplane, but not in a paraglider.  Perhaps the recognition of just how dangerous the flying practices being promoted as desirable performance characteristics of a paraglider is the reason we are seeing pilots put their brand new competition wings up for sale.

Even though I'm not a competition pilot, I'm putting my vote firmly in the Mark Hayman and Godfrey Wellness camp, proposing  the Worlds to be Serial class, and a highly controlled, revamped one at that. Or as several others put in differing threads:

The world championships should 
be about finding the best PILOT
not the best GLIDER
paragliding forum post

Another point I'd like to make is relating to task setting.  One of the reasons people were flying close to the hill at Piedrahita was apparently the need to stay around in the start cylinder until a specific time. Here is my proposal for changing the format of racing to avoid a frantic gaggle of gliders sprinting through the course neck and neck, from thermal to thermal.

This idea comes from my experience as a teenager, when I was in the New Zealand team for two World Champtionships in the (almost as obscure as paragliding) sport of orienteering. In orienteering, competitors  leave the start gate at 2 minute intervals. Like the world paragliding champs, there is representation by country, so there are competitors from some small countries with relatively few pilots (New Zealand is a good example), that might not actually have a very high world ranking, but they are at the Worlds because they are ranked highly within their country.

In orienteering, everyone races alone, against the clock. What this results in is an addictive, absolutely electric atmosphere after the race. No one knows the final standings until the last competitor to start completes the task. So everyone hangs around talking and glued to the results board. The race winner can change multiple times within the space of minutes in the hour or so after the first competitor completes the task. I think paragliding racing could really benefit from this style of event, especially with live tracking making watching the tentative results come in real time absolutely achievable. If tasks were shorter so that pretty much the entire field would make goal, the atmosphere in the landing field would become the major focus of the day.

Why not also change the race format so that there is a start line drawn in the sky, rather than a start cylinder. For instance in Piedrahita, a straight line could have been drawn across the entire Piedrahita valley. At this site, the best thermals are actually often in the valley, not near the launch.  Pilots get to choose their start time, their start height, and their start position within a 60 min window.  Once a pilot crosses the 'start line in the sky', their personal 'race against the clock' is on, based on their GPS tracklog.  The smartest pilots will get as high as possible within the start window, watching as other pilots commit, hoping they can do better, but not holding back too long in case things actually get worse and they miss the best racing line. This makes the start immensely tactical and interesting and a test of pilot skill and tactics rather than flat out glider speed. It would also make the start environment a lot safer, as potentially there could be four or five optimum start thermals that are equally advantageous over the duration of the start window. This would naturally split the field out into different gaggles, rather than one, intense overcrowded one. It obviously brings some luck in as well.

Because the Worlds are a team event, there would also be a huge amount of team tactics coming into play. Do pilots from one country choose to support each other and spread out to ensure one pilot is part of each gaggle that takes off, let the field make the early mistakes and wait to see if the day develops or which thermals are working?

The finish line would also be a line in the sky. A pilots elapsed time is calculated based on crossing the line, at anything over a predetermined altitude above the landing field, giving spectators something to watch. Crossing the finish line under that altitude would result in a time penalty. This would create tactical flying, and ensure pilots are in no pressure to land in gaggles that have raced into goal at full speed bar close to the ground in a head to head race. Just scraping in to the finish line on a downwind final glide to gaol becomes a serious tactical mistake, not a competitive necessity.

To sum up, I can only agree with  the words of Godfrey Wenness:
"One can only hope that this tragedy results
in a common sense certified/flight tested 
Serial Class future for FAI events"