by Rick Masters » Sat Aug 29, 2015 5:32 pm
Open letter to Frank Colver from Rick Masters
Frank,
On August 28, 2015, after reading “Safety Reminders” by USHPA Accident Review Committee Co-Chair (HG) Mitchell Shipley, you asked on the U.S. Hawks Forum, “... why the HG fatalities began increasing so much starting in mid 2014?”
The short answer, Frank, is because it is not true. 2014 was a stellar year for hang gliding safety in the United States. Things did not start going down hill until the Jean Lake joyriding and towing debacle in March, 2015.
Like Shipley, I also keep a database of free flight accidents. Mine, however, is entirely independent and global. A global database, by its nature, provides greater insight than one arbitrarily truncated by national boundaries.
Unlike Shipley, I am not constrained by the legal issues pertaining to a corporation so I am willing to provide my opinion and share my data. This is important because it appears to me that it is no longer possible for a corporation in the United States to provide effective accident analysis without incurring significant legal liability. This is a serious and disturbing development that stands in the way of the association's obligation to membership to provide genuine accident analysis and tends to sidetrack the issue into the la-la land of strangely perceived political correctness and meaningless obfuscation and delay.
For instance, nowhere in the letter are mentioned the words “towing,” collapse” or “tandem.” It is not possible to have a genuine discussion of free flight safety without touching on these issues.
Let us examine part of this letter in detail.
Dear Fellow Free Flight Pilot,
There are some recent trends in fatal hang gliding and paragliding accidents that you, as a pilot, should know, so that you can make better decisions managing the inherent risks of our chosen pastime.
First a few facts to add to the graphs below showing fatality trends:
Faced with the appalling fatality rate of early hang gliding, the first chairman of the United States Hang Gliding Association's Accident Review Board, insurance actuary Robert V. Wills, wrote in the January 1975 Ground Skimmer, “We must have your help in recording all prior fatal accidents all over the world. We can no longer afford to have people guessing out loud on how many fatalities there have been.”
“If we fail in our responsibility to establish a reliable central data bank on hang glider accidents,” he added, “we are going to look like a happy-go-lucky band of daredevil adventurers to some politician or judge and you may one day no longer be able to soar free as a bird, regardless of what our true safety record may be.”
Unfortunately, global data collection was arbitrarily terminated by the USHGA in the mid-1980s.
• From 2005 through 2014, combined hang glider and paraglider fatalities per annum have ranged from five to nine, averaging about six.
• In 2014, we experienced nine total fatalities in the US.
My records for 2014 indicate 9 total fatalities in the USA, plus Bud Wruck's fatal crash in Slovenia:
PARAGLIDING
1) Paul MacDonald flew into power lines – HI, 2/10/14
2) Roland Allen Carter got wrapped in his canopy performing aerobatics – UT, 2/23/14
3) Bence Pascu flew into the ground performing aerobatics - ??, 3/21/14
4) Eric Jonathon Hill died following a collapse – UT, 4/20/14
5) Kevin Smith died following a collapse – CO, 6/20/14
6) Bud Wruck of Damon, TX, died following a collapse in Slovenia, 7/3/14
7) David Norwood died following a collapse – WA, 7/16/14
8) David Pearson died following a collapse performing aerobatics – CA, 10/28/14
9) Kjell Sporseen flew into the ground performing aerobatics - ??, 11/30/14
One electrocution, five collapses and three aerobatic mishaps. Hang gliders don't experience sail collapse. The pendulum gyrations that parachutists call “acrobatics” are not comparable with the true aerobatics of hang gliders. Eight out of these nine paragliding fatalities stem from flaws inherent to parachutes and are not something hang glider pilots can do anything about.
HANG GLIDING
1) Joseph Julik lost control of a new topless glider during landing rotation – WI, 9/29/14
By any measure, only one hang gliding death in all of the U.S. represents a spectacular success. That is what we hang glider pilots accomplished in 2014. For a dangerous sport, that is something to brag about.
But how is this presented by the USHPA?
• In 2014, we experienced nine total fatalities in the US.
That doesn't look so good, does it?
What happened?
They mixed in paragliding fatalities with hang gliding fatalities. Just what are hang glider pilots supposed to do about paragliding safety when many of us won't even fly them because we believe them to be too dangerous? By reporting fatalities in this manner, the USHPA renders safety accomplishments in hang gliding meaningless. It strikes me as odd that the Hang Gliding Co-Chair would present a fatalities list in this manner.
• Since the beginning of this year, we have experienced fifteen fatalities: 8 Hang Gliding and 7 Paragliding. The 2014 fatality rate was high.
Again, hang gliding experienced only one fatality in 2014. The 2014 fatality rate for hang gliding was very low. It's just that nobody's ever going to know it because of the USHPA's flawed premise. “Hang gliding is dangerous, too,” goes the paragliding mantra. Perhaps Shipley didn't want to draw heat by pointing out something that went against paragliding mythology.
...The 2015 rate is already more than double the annual fatality rate for the last decade–and the year is not yet over.
Let's look at 2015:
PARAGLIDING
1) Clayton Butler stalled a small paraglider and spun to the ground - HI, 1/15/15
2) Billy Baker hit a cliff on a small paraglider – WY, 1/22/15
3) Ronald Faoro fell from harness – CA, 3/1/15
4) Siegfried Muhlhauser collapse culminating in a spiral dive – UT, 5/1/15
5) Junichi Nakamura was found dead – CA, 5/17/15
6) Richard Moren had a collapse – WA, 6/14/15
7) Gregory Knudson had a collapse – FRANCE, 7/14/15
8) Dale Brockett unknown – CA, 7/14/15
Two killed themselves on speedwings, one fell from his harness and five died from collapses or unknown events, which usually turn out to have been collapses. Anyone flying speedwings is on my short list. Allowing them into a hang gliding organization makes as much sense as allowing grenade launchers into hunting clubs. As for paragliders, they collapse in turbulence and I've learned to expect them to do that in hot weather. Hang glider pilots can't do anything about this and it makes no sense to harangue them for it.
HANG GLIDING
1) Kelly Harrison tow lockout tandem joyriding – NV, 3/28/15
2) Arys Moorhead child passenger, tow lockout tandem joyriding – NV, 3/28/15
3) Markus Schaedler was found dead – CA, 5/9/15
4) Scott Trueblood flew straight into mountain – NY, 5/17/15
5) Bertrand Delacroix spun to ground – MD, 6/20/15
6) Edgar Higgins was found dead – NV, 6/26/15
7) Rafael Lavin flying wire snapped – CA, 8/23/15
8) Craig Pirazzi blown off cliff launch - UT, 8/24/15
Two died in a commercial joyriding accident under tow, two were found dead, one died in a spin, one had a structural failure, one flew into a cliff and another was blown off a cliff. It is doubtful that the USHPA instructors' cabal that profits from joyriding will ever enforce strict interpretation of the FAR 103 tandem exemption for instructional purposes, but if they had, we would be looking at six, not eight, hang gliding fatalities.
Pilot error is always the leading issue in hang gliding. I suspect flying near stall was a factor in three fatalities, barring medical issues, because when hang glider pilots are found dead, they usually stalled their gliders at low altitude and dove into the hill. Spins are hard to maintain in an intact hang glider. I almost died in one, though, when my harness zipper line caught on a sail tensioning lever in the Sierras.
A pilot can box himself in to a bad outcome with wishful thinking. Delayed maintenance and cliff launches in turbulence without a wire man come to mind. Professional film crews often invite disaster.
• There have been twenty-four pilot fatalities since the beginning of 2014:
As I mentioned earlier, I am focused on global accident numbers. I know of 161 paragliding fatalities and 22 hang gliding fatalities since the beginning of 2014. Hopefully, these represent the larger fraction of the true numbers.
The constant throughout is that hang glider pilots, by and large, kill themselves by pilot error while soaring parachutists, by and large, are killed by their paragliders suddenly collapsing in normal turbulence, then going out of control. Pilot error can be addressed, but the inherent risk of collapse in paragliding cannot. Because of this fact, I doubt that real improvements in paragliding safety can ever be accomplished.
Hang gliding certainly has nothing to do with paragliding attrition.
And the premise at the heart of the USHPA analysis, that the fatality numbers can be combined to yield meaningful information, is simply ridiculous.
Rick Masters
August 29, 2015
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