Including my training, I’ve been paragliding for six years. My longest cross-country flight was ninety kilometres; my longest time in the air was eight hours. I’ve crossed the main Alpine ridge and flown above 4,200 metres. I’ve owned three excellent wings, two harnesses and two flight computers.
Most of my flying has been in Europe: Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France, Spain, Croatia and Iceland, among others. I’ve also taken longer flying trips to Argentina, Kenya, Namibia and Iran. I tried to arrange trips to India and Malaysia too, but unfortunately neither happened.
I earned my licence at a small flying school. Small, but truly excellent.
One evening I asked the older of our two instructors, “How many people you knew have died paragliding during your flying career?”
“At least thirty in the past thirty years,” he said.
Well. That’s quite a lot…
In my own forty years, I had known only two people who died. Both were killed in motorcycle accidents.
Looking back over my flying, I can remember only one actual injury. Honestly, it was the sort of injury I might just as easily have suffered hiking.
Only one injury, then. But a closer look reveals these other incidents:
“Four or five bad decisions to launch, all ending safely through sheer luck. Once I failed to recognise the lee created by an incoming valley wind and had a major collapse very close to the mountainside. That frightened me badly. Another time my harness failed in flight, so I had to lose height and land standing upright.”
That works out at roughly one or two incidents a year.
I went flying in northwestern Argentina with friends. At the end of our first week, on the final day of our trip, two pilots unknown to me died in accidents. During one landing I encountered a powerful thermal bubble breaking away from the ground. The sudden disturbance terrified me, though I landed safely. Flying there was tricky: extremely strong air, few launch sites and plenty of cacti. Overall, though, the trip was exhilarating.
Later I joined a small group in Namibia. My own flights went smoothly. But an experienced pilot suffered a massive collapse while taking photographs: more than half his wing folded. Fortunately he recovered without throwing his reserve and landed safely. Several others flew into strong convergence lift and got down using spiral dives. I was very glad to be on the ground already. Had I still been up there, I honestly don’t know whether I could have spiralled down.
Kenya brought my first crash. While coming in to land in the Rift Valley, I unexpectedly met strong lift and stayed with it. It carried me up another two or three hundred metres; parts of the climb may have reached fifteen metres per second. I’d never heard my flight computer sound like that. Then I fell out of the lift and the wing surged violently forward and sideways. I couldn’t control it and fell, about twenty metres from the mountainside and fifteen above the treetops. Thank goodness the branches caught me. I ended up hanging close to the ground. The wing survived; the flight computer didn’t.
The next day, I went flying again.
There were fewer than ten pilots at that Kenyan site. In three weeks I saw two or three tree landings and two or three reserve deployments—perhaps just about tolerable. Not long after I left, I heard that three pilots had died in successive accidents. I didn’t know any of them.
Iran was another small-group trip. There was only one broken leg, but the weather was poor and our group flew very little anyway.
Over the past six months I’d flown a lot in the Alps. I switched to lightweight equipment, easy to carry while hiking and climbing. Yet, for reasons I couldn’t explain, I repeatedly felt uneasy in the air. Slowly, thoughts of stopping kept returning.
During a summer trip to Croatia, the thermals weren’t especially strong. Perhaps I was circling too tightly in a small core and pulled too much brake, stalling the wing. Or perhaps it was a collapse; I’m still not sure. My reactions were too slow, and once again I ended up in a tree…
After that, I decided to leave the sport.
I’d completed two SIV courses and always tried to fly actively. I never rested my hands on the risers; I kept the brakes properly in hand. Even so, none of that enabled me to handle the sudden situations I encountered.
In many other sports, you can approach a known hazard gradually and practise for it over and over. In paragliding, we try to avoid danger, so genuinely critical situations remain rare.
Targeted practice means SIV. But even there, perhaps you practise a dozen collapses, three to five spins and a few other manoeuvres, and the course is over.
For an ordinary recreational pilot like me, that isn’t enough to establish automatic reactions to an unexpected emergency. I find it difficult to accumulate the five hundred practice repetitions needed to make those responses instinctive in paragliding.
But the two tree landings weren’t ultimately why I stopped. These were the real reasons:
Crossing a valley, I started asking myself, “Is this really where I most want to be?” In turbulence: “This thrilled me a few years ago. Why do I now need half an hour of thermalling to recover that feeling?” After landing: “Wonderful, no thermal broke away on final this time. Why am I now so happy to be standing on the ground? Am I happy—or merely relieved to feel safe?”
Although I’ve decided to quit, I still think paragliding is a wonderful hobby—perhaps the best. But it is extremely dangerous!
Since stopping, I often hear of someone’s acquaintance dying while flying, becoming disabled, or finally being able to stand again…
I’ve taken up windsurfing now, and I understand the weather much better too.
That story wasn’t mine, this frog’s. It was an account shared by a German paraglider pilot.
A friend suggested reading people’s reasons for quitting critically. Once someone has made a decision, their explanation often supports the choice already made. Nationality, cultural background, age, education, capacity for self-directed learning and self-awareness can all shape why someone starts paragliding—or stops.
Another thought the pilot’s account was honest and fair: given his experiences and feelings, quitting made complete sense.
I agree with both views. We can indeed identify factors that might have been avoidable: gaps in weather knowledge, rushing into demanding conditions, limitations in physical responsiveness and so on.
But that isn’t my main reason for sharing it.
We’re always curious about why people begin something. Far fewer of us want to understand deeply why they stop. That is especially true in paragliding.
I haven’t verified the German pilot’s account or claims. But that isn’t the point here. Looking at an unfamiliar activity from different angles can deepen our understanding and keep expectations from becoming distorted.
Paragliding has a substantial dropout rate. Unfortunately we readily share the joys of flight, while misfortune is often treated as taboo. Fewer still describe the inner journey that led them to quit.
There’s another reason I wanted to share this: happiness matters in life. Don’t let one pursuit consume you.
Paragliding is captivating. It can absorb us until we forget ourselves. Yet the line between losing yourself in joy and losing your way may be thin. Obsession can blind us to the beauty around us—and to dangers we are gradually entering.
If an activity no longer brings you joy, only anxiety and unease, listen to yourself and choose with your happiness in mind. Even if that means leaving, the decision deserves respect—and celebration.
Hang-gliding and paragliding world champion Rob Whittall put it this way: “In the end, who flies highest or furthest doesn’t matter. What matters is coming home from a wonderful flight with a smile on your face, beautiful views in your mind and passion in your heart. That’s why we fly.”
I still find paragliding beautiful. I understand it better and better, including its darker side. I’ve been injured too, but it remains deeply attractive to me. At present I have no intention of stopping.
But flying is ultimately just one way for me to experience life and happiness. I love it, but it has to serve my well-being. If it no longer makes me happy one day, I’ll choose differently. Happiness is victory!
After these personal reflections, let’s return to reason: is paragliding really as extremely dangerous as the German pilot who quit describes?
There’s plenty of debate about safety. Here is my attempt to approach it. Leaving personal factors aside for a moment, safety depends on many objective conditions. I group them under two broad headings:
1. Complexity of Flying Scenarios (CFS): weather, acrobatics versus cross-country racing, spot landing versus practice on a small slope, physical condition and other factors together determine how complex a flying situation is.
2. Skills, Experience & Equipment Match (SEEM): both the pilot’s level of skill and experience, and how well the equipment suits that level.
I drew a small diagram to illustrate the relationship between these dimensions:
In a straightforward flying situation, even a less experienced pilot can be relatively safe with appropriate precautions. Modern wings’ passive safety is also improving. Add strong skills, experience and well-matched equipment, and flying in such conditions becomes very safe.
In complex situations, however, even skilled, experienced pilots with suitable equipment face a demanding activity with real risks. If skills, experience and equipment suitability are all low, flying becomes very dangerous.
This is only a partial attempt to explain safety visually. Personal factors matter greatly too: self-awareness, self-control and the quality of individual decisions. Those are complex, hard to describe and harder to measure, so I won’t attempt that analysis here. Even on objective grounds alone, though, declaring paragliding either extremely dangerous or very safe is too one-sided.
Broadly, experience in countries with established paragliding communities suggests that accidents have a lower fatality rate than accidents in faster aircraft such as sailplanes, but a somewhat higher injury rate. To progress in this sport, you need to keep sharpening your judgement, take responsibility actively and stay motivated to learn.
Lately I’ve heard complaints that uneven instruction makes learning more dangerous. Some go so far as to dismiss the whole Chinese paragliding community as rotten from top to bottom, without a training system or any redeeming feature. That is narrow-minded, irresponsible and dispiriting. Whatever grievances lie behind it, it plainly isn’t true.
In China I see instructors, acro pilots, accomplished cross-country pilots and recreational flyers who are generous, open, diligent and eager to learn. They lead by example and quietly work to help the sport develop.
For example, Wang Di (WeChat: sabrena99), a paraglider instructor certified by the Aero Sports Federation of China, has recently completed her Paragliding Training Manual after years of work. It draws on established overseas training systems as well as practical teaching experience in China.
To me that is a milestone not only in her career but in the development of Chinese paragliding. And she is just one example of the many people quietly working for change. You may not see them, but their work never stops.
There may be a long way to go, and today’s efforts may still fall short. But there are people who choose to shoulder the burden and move forward with goodwill, without complaining or giving up. Their work should never be erased.
My respect to everyone quietly helping Chinese paragliding move forward.