Thanks, Joe
You were the first person to bring this to my attention.
[[On 09/29/2019 17:10, Joe Faust wrote:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-tanzania-accident/canadian-tourist-dies-n-paragliding-accident-in-tanzanias-mount-kilimanjaro-idUSKBN1WE0AE ]]
Justin Kyllo was the 1,896th soaring parachutist fatality I am aware of.
https://www.wingsofkilimanjaro.com/If you scroll down to the team members, you will also find that his PG-flying wife was on the team and likely was there with him. Apparently, Gabriel Jebb of Torrey Pines fame was also on the team attempting to fly from the summit. It makes me wonder how many of these soaring parachutists would be considered amateurs, launching from a 20,000-foot mountain? It seems rather inadvisable to me...
I remember that Steve and Bill Moyes had flown hang gliders from Kilimanjaro in the 1980s. Curious about any other freeflight fatalities, I delved into my encyclopedic, yet incomplete 2,500-page database and found this story of Austrian Hurbert Kuehr, who had also ascended the mountain with his wife. Note that R.V. Wills' 1976 USHGA fatalities list, with a total of 71 and also hang gliding's worst year, was global in scope.
HG fatality #192 – Hurbert Kuehr, 38, of Kitzbuhl, Austria
#64 of 71 global HG fatalities in 1976 reported by USHGA
November 11, 1976 Mt. Killimanjaro (19,340 ft.), TANZANIA
Hurbert Kuehr, one of Austria's leading hang glider pilots, was last seen alive by his wife, who had climbed with him to the snow-covered summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro. He was determined to wait for favorable conditions but she descended to a more comfortable altitude and spent the night. When she returned the following day, there was no sign of Kuehr. She offered a $600 reward to villagers living near the mountain in hopes they would join the hunt. His body was finally found near the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro two weeks after he disappeared.
November 17, 1976: African villagers have been called in to help the massive hunt for an Austrian skyrider missing on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest mountain. The request for the villagers' help was made by the police in the Kilimanjaro area some 160 kilometers south of here as helicopters and light aircraft continued the search for 38-year-old Herbert Kuehr, a hotelier from Kitzbuhl in the Austrian Tyrol. Kuehr has been missing since Thursday when he set off up the 19,340 foot mountain to attempt to glide in a kite from the summit to the Tanzanian town of Moshl. Search teams from Tanzania and Kenya have so far found no trace of Kuehr or his purple gliding kite.
Kuehr, however, is one of Austria's leading skyriders with more than 1,000 flights and Austrian officials were hopeful he might still be alive. An Austrian embassy spokesman said if he was lucky he might have fallen into a tropical forest on the slopes of the mountain, where there are trees about 100 feet tall. If he has fallen into a forest, it would not be easy to see him from the air, but his chances for survival would be greater because he could find water and wild fruit to live until searchers find him.
USA: “Kilimanjaro hang glider hunted,” Lewiston Daily Sun (ME), 15 Nov 1976, 7.
USA: Wills, Robert V., "1976 Accident Summary," USHGA Hang Gliding, Jun 1977, 49.
USA: "African crash kills gliderist," Bakersfield Californian (CA), 26 Nov 1976, 3.
2019 started off with Lua Pepper, PG fatality #1788, killing herself art Crestline. This makes at least 108 soaring parachutists killed this year, and no doubt many more as reports trickle in. I expect it to be the sport's worst year.
Rick Masters
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Rick then noted:
Uh-oh. Parebola.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/09/possible-cover-up-of-ebola-outbreak-in-tanzania-prompts-travel-warnings/
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by SamKellner » Mon Sep 30, 2019 10:31 am 
And as a result of not flying a safer (real) aircraft, a whole bunch of friends and strangers are spending their own funds on sending him from Pakistan back to Australia. That's called "Spreading the Pain Around". 
