Injuries and influencing factors on accidents in paragliding

Abstract

Approximately 100 000 pilots worldwide practice the sport of paragliding. Most studies performed to date have been conducted retrospectively, using data from hospitals or emergency rescue organisations and focusing on injury patterns. Reasons for accidents and possible influencing factors have hardly been investigated. Therefore, the aim of this study was to analyse paragliding accidents in the Alps and to identify possible influencing factors. The data were taken from the "Flash-News" magazine (issues no. 149-160) covering the years 2015 to 2017. Only accidents occurring in Austria, Germany, Switzerland and Italy were considered. All in all, 487 accidents met the inclusion criteria of using a conventional paraglider and were analysed in this study. 88.5 % of the pilots involved were male and the average age was 42.9 ± 13.7 years. Most accidents happened in summer and during the afternoon hours. The majority of incidents happened during the flight phase, but the comparison of tandem and solo pilots showed that tandem pilots had significantly more accidents during the take-off phase, whereas solo pilots had more accidents during the landing phase. Mistakes by pilots were identified as the main reason for accidents, followed by accidents caused by wind. In 71 of 487 (14,6 %) accidents, the pilots were not injured. If they were injured during the accident, the lower limbs were injured most frequently (35.5 %). In 45 of 487 accidents, the pilots died during the accident (9,2 %). The fact that more flights were executed during the summer months, combined with the more demanding flight conditions in summer (wind, weather, thermal conditions) may have led to the increased number of incidents in the period from April to August. Mistakes by pilots were identified as the major causes of accidents; therefore, training to handle difficult situations and the equipment are suggested. In general, the documentation of paragliding accidents is insufficient and inconsistent. The implementation of a harmonised, transnational form to document paragliding accidents is recommended to get unified and comparable data.