US Hawks Hang Gliding Association

No oversight on hang-gliding

Self-regulation fails to prohibit pilots from taking flight

By Kelly Sinoski and Tara Carman, Vancouver SunApril 30, 2012


Transport Canada regulates ultralight planes and skydiving, but the sport of hang-gliding is largely unregulated — despite five fatalities across Canada in the past decade, including three in B.C.

And while there’s a body that certifies hang-gliding instructors, the Hang Gliders and Paragliders Association of Canada said it can do nothing to prevent pilots from taking people on flights, even if their membership in the association has been revoked.

William (Jon) Orders, the pilot involved in last weekend’s tragedy, in which a 27-year-old woman became detached from the tandem glider and plunged 300 metres to her death, was an experienced and paid-up member of HPAC.

But Steve Parson, a Canadian pilot who was convicted of manslaughter in New Zealand in 2010 after he failed to hook his female passenger into the glider, is still offering tandem flights on Vancouver Island on his website despite not being a member.

Parson was involved in an accident after he returned to Canada, in which one of his student took off on a solo flight and crashed during his sixth lesson.

HPAC spokesman Jason Warner said he wasn’t too familiar with what happened in New Zealand and could not “confirm or deny” whether Parson — who is no longer a member of HPAC — was still offering flights. Parson did not return phone calls to The Vancouver Sun Monday.

“We’re self-regulated. We can only advise them and tell people what the regulations are,” Warner said. “If they continue to fly, that’s up to them to do it.”

HPAC takes credit for keeping the sport self-regulated, according to its website, which states: “In this age of government regulations, it is significant that hang gliding and paragliding are the least regulated segments of aviation. This is due to the nature of these sports and the unrelenting effort of the HPAC/ACVL to keep these sports free of regulation.”

This means Transport Canada’s aviation regulations do not impose any training requirements for hang-glider or paraglider pilots, nor do they require the pilots to hold a licence or permit. Transport Canada does, however, require that pilots pass a written test known as the HAGAR examination before taking hang-gliders and paragliders into controlled airspace.

Bill Yearwood of the transportation safety board noted there are fewer regulations as the flying craft gets smaller. Big aircraft, for instance, are heavily regulated followed by smaller planes, float planes, private operations, ultralights and hot air balloons.

Ultralight aircraft pilots are required by Transport Canada to get a specialized permit for that purpose and the aircraft must meet certain design specifications. A recreational pilot permit is required for any single-engine aircraft in order for the pilot to transport a passenger.

But those regulations don’t apply to hang-gliders, who wear a harness hooked into a glider, while a passenger is connected to the same wing. The pair then usually run down a short ramp or mountain and as the airspeed increases, the glider lifts them into the air.

HPAC, a non-profit membership organization, provides a national insurance program as well as guidelines for pilots and instructors. This includes requiring instructors to be 18 or older with at least 25 hours air time in either hang-gliding or paragliding. They are also required to have a valid first-aid certificate, complete an instructor certification course and put in another 25 hours assisting a certified instructor.

The RCMP and BC Coroner’s Services are still trying to figure out what went wrong with last weekend’s fatal flight.

Orders, who has 16 years experience and offered tandem flights through his company, Vancouver Hang Gliding, had just launched off Mount Woodside near Agassiz when his passenger, Lenami Godinez, started falling.

Police noted Orders tried to grab the woman and the straps of her harness as she clutched desperately for a hold on the pilot, even clinging to his feet before she plunged 300 metres to her death. Her body was found seven hours later in a clearcut, 20 metres from one of Orders’ shoes.

Orders was charged Monday with obstructing justice in connection with “an allegation that he withheld potential key evidence which could help determine whether he played a role in any wrongdoing.”

In the New Zealand case, Parson, who was considered a Canadian pilot abroad at the time, was charged with manslaughter after he failed to properly hook 23-year-old Greek tourist Eleni Zeri into the hang-glider during a trip in 2003.

In a case eerily similar to what happened at Mount Woodside, the two launched from a site on the Remarkables mountain range, when it was discovered almost immediately that Zeri wasn’t attached to the glider.

As she hung by her hands, Parson tried to hold her, even wrapping his legs around her, but she slipped, falling 200 metres. He had faced 10 years in prison but was instead given community service and ordered to pay $10,000 NZ.

There have been other tragedies involving tandem hang-gliding flights.

In 2002, a pilot and student were being towed by an ultralight on a tandem training flight near Fort Langley when the tow line snapped and the glider spiralled out of control.

William Allen Woloshyniuk, 40, of Coquitlam and his student, Victor Douglas Cox, also 40, of Cumberland on Vancouver Island, both fell 300 metres, struck a tree and died.

Altogether, hang-gliding accidents across Canada between 2002 and 2012 have resulted in two serious injuries and five fatalities, including the three in B.C.

There were two other B.C. fatalities before 2002. Two years earlier, John Ames, a hang-gliding student, had a heart attack in the air. That crash, at the Fort Langley sea plane base, killed Ames and instructor Raymond Smith.

ksinoski@vancouversun.com


http://www.vancouversun.com/travel/over ... story.html

S C Wise:

Re: Is the issue of safety coming to a head? Mon, May 7 2012, 5:08:47 pm
Hello Folks,

It's been a while since my last post here on Oz, but I have recently been following this (failure to get hooked in) topic. In reading the below Incident Report (posted by Scare) as made by Jon Orders last August (the blown launch in which Linerider was involved) I am, to a degree, astounded.

In this very brief report, you have a (Canadian) certified tandem pilot essentially saying, . . . I do not have the judgment or experience to launch in safe and proper conditions while holding a very serious responsibility for someone else's life.


I derive this conclusion from Jon Orders comments that he ". . . attempted to launch in switchy windy cond[itions]." ". . . I'd convinced myself that it was OK to launch . . . [because] . . . I had launched the previous day in the same conditions. . . "


Now, I've been flying for a while now and for my very own safety, I don't launch in "switchy windy" conditions. Knowledge and experience has taught me to wait for winds of a steady speed and stable direction. This is when I have no responsibility but for myself! Many years ago I held a tandem rating and if I had found myself facing launch in similar conditions - with a student tandem passenger - I would have backed off launch and reschedule for different day (if I'd gone out to the hill at all).

What really gets me is Jon's final quoted comment that he attempted this blown launch because he had, essentially, gotten away with it in the recent past. !!!!!!

These sound like the comments of a dang Novice pilot who has F***ed up a launch in his/her first 6 months of mountain launching. I would never expect to hear such a report from an experienced pilot and certified, professional, tandem instructor.

What worries me is that the inevitable(?) pressures of operating a (mountain launch) tandem operation might - and/or does - lead to a "regularly scheduled airline" approach to a day's prearranged flights (I've witnessed the effect). Well, hang gliders aren't airliners and safe launch conditions are a prerequisite for safe operations. Add a passenger to the equation and that rule (not suggestion) becomes all that much more critical.

Jon's below quoted comments, in my view, define a pilot who lacks both experience and proper judgment. He too easily concludes that if he pulled something off in the past, he can pull it off again (regarding questionable conditions).

In addition, this comments about his analysis of the video of his blown launch . . . ??? !!! He is reporting (I guess, honestly) that he doesn't have enough subtle feel for his glder to know whether it is level, banked or otherwise stable as he begins a launch. Not good.

Cudos to Jon Orders for being willing to file such a report (if it wasn't mandatory). But where are his comments about correcting the obvious mistakes made leading to this mishap? But, then perhaps this is not a complete version of the report? Or, if this was a club forum thread topic, further back and forth commentary may show up elsewhere.

Either way, an important point here is that while describing a mishap is admirable, that is only a first step. One suggestion that I would have expected to result from the below report is, that Jon Orders should NOT allow economic pressures (prescheduled tandem flight appointments) to compromise his responsibility to launch and fly under safe circumstances. If the weather is not conducive to safe operations, reschedule the tandem(s). I'd like to know if that suggestion/requirement, or one like it, was ever made in response to the below reported incident. How, or whether a response was made is significant for future prevention of such present tragedies.

Scare!:Jon Orders, Sun Aug 07, 2011 6:53 pm, westcoastsoaringclub.com:Post subject: Blown launch at Woodside.

today I went in with a passenger. no one hurt. no real damage to glider. I attempted to launch at Woodside in switchy windy cond. I thought I was good to go and within 4 steps we were in the bushes below launch. I had my go pro on the base bar and checked out the footage when I got home. It showed I had dragged the right wing tip. I felt I had started my run with the wings level.

Basically I'd convinced myself that it was Ok to launch when it would have been better to relax and make sure the cycles were coming straight in for a longer time. I think I could have prevented this happening by waiting and watching for a bit. I had launched the previous day in the same conditions with no problems.

Burnabycitizenstandard
2012/04/30
at 7:04 PM ET
Do a search for Groupon deals under the pilot's name and you will see he has sold 770 deals at half-price in the past few months. They all expire before July 27th. A good question to ask is: Should extreme sports be sold en mass on daily dealy sites? Will there be enough manpower to deal with the huge influx of couponers and gift certificates without sacrificing safety?

Most important of all: Should a life-risking extreme sport be treated as a bargain gift that you get at a 50% discount? We are not dealing with spa or restaurant visits here. We are dealing with actual human lives.

theayeinthesky wrote:Based on the anecdotes that I have heard, I suspect that in the majority of failure-to-hook-in accidents, the pilot was hooked in at some point prior to the ill-fated launch. I've lost track of how many of these stories include the words "he backed off of launch and unhooked" (including the one that I witnessed). In my opinion, unhooking has got to be one of the most dangerous things one can do, inviting a disaster. You have the memory in your head of having hooked in, but you are not hooked in. No matter how many checks you've done before that point, they all go out the window once you open up that carabiner. One of my instructors told me that he would never under any circumstances unhook a 'biner with his helmet on (and putting on his helmet was the last thing he always did when getting ready). That way if he was ever unhooked, he would have his bare head as a reminder that he had to do all of the checks over again. My approach is to never unhook my harness from the glider unless I am in an LZ from where it's not possible to launch (in that case I might unhook before moving my glider to the edge of the field, depending on conditions and circumstances). I really think that in most cases, it's not "failure to hook in", but "failure to hook back in". Don't give that scenario a chance to arise.