The tandem pilot in the clip is unidentified, and Gursky bears him no ill-will. “Still can’t cross hang gliding off the bucket list till I finish a successful flight! ……maybe Norway…?” “Glad I am still here to tell the story. Gail’s flight was awesome and she will share the pics when she is ready. No cast, but a wrap and a brace for 6 weeks. Left the hospital by 2:00 that afternoon. Then I had to climb under two electric fences to get to a road, where they had someone picking us up to go to the ER. “The pilot rushed over, helped me up and walked me off of the gun range (true). When I sat up I knew something was wrong and saw that my wrist was broken. “I would guesstimate the total flight time was about 5 minutes.
I looked down to see my feet hit first, which ripped me off at about 45 mph as it was a hot landing and I was under the landing gear. “I ended up holding on bar with the left hand and the lower part of his leg with the right when we were nearing the ground. “The pilot grabbed my hand, but like in the movies it was a slow motion slipping of the grip until my right hand slipped off and I grabbed another strap on his left side for a bit but this slipped off also. As we were going down for a hot landing I was slowly losing my grip with my right hand as I was swinging in the wind with the glider. “My left hand was on the cross bar that was ultimately the landing gear, with a wheel on each side. He was trying to make a bee line to the landing field as he knew what the situation could bring. I was losing grip with my right hand, that was holding onto a strap on the pilot’s right shoulder. I remember looking down and thinking, this is it. “My body weight shifted straight down and I found myself hanging on for my life. I was expecting to level out above the pilot as we went, but quickly discovered that my harness was not attached to the hang glider or anything else…. We waited a bit for the updraft to pick up and then we ran till we left the side of the 4,000 ft mountain edge. Then my pilot and I lined up for take-off. “Gail and her pilot took off first….looked cool as hell. Pretty much run till your feet leave the ground. Then we practiced our take off run, which was 6 to 8 steps. “Cut to the mountain… the pilots had us step into our harnesses followed by sticking our arms and head through and getting them adjusted. Something we both wanted to do…this was a tandem flight each with their own pilot. Vacation in Switzerland started with hang gliding.
On landing the pilot had swallowed his camera’s data card in an impulsive bid to conceal evidence.īefore posting the video footage of the incident, Gursky, who suffered a broken wrist during the emergency landing, posted the story of what happened on his Facebook page on 23 October. In 2014 a Canadian tandem hang glider pilot was jailed after his passenger fell 300m to her death on a tourist flight. A professional tandem pilot not clipping in his or her passenger is almost unheard of, but has happened before, almost always with fatal results. Not clipping-in is the worst thing you can do on a hang glider or paraglider, and has led to numerous fatal accidents. For 2 minutes 14 seconds I had to hang on for my life! The landing was a rough one, but I lived to tell the story.”Īlthough a “good sport” about the incident, all pilots know how close he was to having a serious accident or worse. On 26 November he posted the heart-stopping video of his vacation tandem hang glider flight in Interlaken, Switzerland, with the words: “My first time hang gliding turned into a near death experience as my safety harness was never hooked to the glider. The passenger in the “Swiss Mishap” video that has gone viral in pilot circles is Florida-based Chris Gursky, an auto-parts manager and photographer. A jaw-dropping video clip of a tourist tandem flight gone wrong in Switzerland has been posted to YouTube, revealing the terrifying ordeal of a pilot and passenger in Interlaken in October.
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