![]() ![]() ![]() He adds with humor: “I will go hang gliding again as I did not enjoy my first flight. An airborne Gursky can be seen grabbing what he can to hold on for survival as the tandem pilot frantically searches for a safe place to land over mountainous terrain in Switzerland. “While the pilot made a critical error in our pre-flight set up by not attaching me to the glider, he did all he could to get me down to the ground as quickly as possible while grabbing onto my harness and flying with one hand,” Chris says in the video. The Florida man posted video Monday of his harrowing first hang-gliding flight after the instructor forgot to attach his safety harness. He needed surgery for his wrist and had to nurse a torn tendon in his bicep, but he’s willing to give hang gliding another try. However, he says, he’s happy with that because the alternative would have been infinitely worse. He hit the ground at 45 mph and broke a wrist. The pilot was also holding him with one hand, and steering the glider with the other.Ĭhris wasn’t able to hold on when they approached ground and he let go before the glider had landed. All this time, Chris was holding on with his left hand on the landing gear and his right on the pilot. In order to not lose height, a hang-glider must find air going up as fast as the glider is descending. He was having trouble controlling it, which meant it took him over 2 minutes until he could land securely. The glider is fully controllable pilots can land where and when they want and travel big distances. There is no motor involved, not even to get into the air. The pilot too understood what was happening and strove to bring the glider back down. Hang gliding is an air sport in which trained pilots fly a glider using only the wind and thermals to stay aloft. However, trouble became apparent when they got up in the air and Chris realized that the pilot had forgotten to secure him to the glider, which meant that his harness was solely for fashion purposes, as he hung in the air, holding on with just his hands. ![]() When Chris and the pilot were still on the ground, there was no sign of trouble. Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.To Chris’ credit, he’s very gracious about this oversight on the part of the pilot, as you can see in the video at the bottom of the page, which documents the entire hair-rising ride that lasted well over 2 minutes. "It's better than the alternative," he quips in the video, which is, you know, an admirable way to look at this whole nightmare.įollow Beckett Mufson on Twitter and Instagram. All this on his first day of vacation in Switzerland. ![]() According to Gizmodo, he fractured his wrist when he tumbled off of the hang glider during the landing, and tore a tendon in his left bicep from holding on to a metal bar and supporting his full body weight for a terrifying 134 seconds. Thanks to the pilot's efforts, they both survived, but the passenger had to be rushed to the hospital. The lopsided weight of the passenger hanging precariously by the strength of his fingers makes the thing hard to steer, so they're forced to soar well above the treetops and then off of a fucking cliff. Right after takeoff, the pilot realizes he made a potentially deadly mistake and attempts to steer the glider to the ground for a quick landing. The opening seconds of the gut-wrenching video show a pilot and the man preparing to launch the glider-but unbeknownst to him, the guy's harness is hanging uselessly off his back. ![]()
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