UKC

This may have been done before, but if not here's some HD footage of a genuine near death experience.

youtube.com/watch?v=dLBJA8SlH2w&

Talk about grip strength in extremis..!

Wow. Serious one-arm dead hang!

Wow!

He'll never make that mistake again.

Jeeeez. That's crazily lucky in the circumstances.

Wow,  it's amazing the power that fear induced adrenalin gives you. The pilot did a cracking job too, I took hangliding lessons when I was 18, the slightest wrong movement always ended badly but he kept it under control with the other guy hanging off to one side. 

Good job his flying skills were better than his pre-flight checks.

I have a recurring nightmare like that, except it's a scarp and a kite and just as I realise I'm hanging on and landing I see the electric power lines.

He has said he wants to try hang gliding again, because "he didn't enjoy his first flight"!

The guy comes across as a bit of a unit. Better in your team than in the opposition I suspect!

I presume the pilot was an instructor, in which case he is extremely culpable.

The pilot seemed to be fighting to turn right due to the weight, could he have gone left and landed it or would that have totally lost control.

guy must have a handshake like a can crusher!

cheers

toby

I suspect "was" is the key word.  An ex-instructor

it brought to mind what they used to say in the army to people who had their pockets undone

" first its pockets, then is pouches and before you know it submarine 'atches"

He could always start a new career

Climbing Instructor perhaps?

I heard a similar story where the instructor had clipped the client in but not himself - then basically launched the client and fell to his doom - not sure what happened to the client (assuming it's a true story), hopefully they figured out how to hang glide very quickly - supposedly happened in Switerland too but have never seen any details...

Yes, that happened quite recently, unfortunately the instructor died but the passenger managed to fly and land without major injury. 

The basic control of a hang glider is very simple. But a considerable number of pilots have died through not clipping in, or not putting their harness on properly. 

It's a crucial step, like putting your climbing harness on and tying in, unfortunately quite a few climbers have died from being distracted and not doing this properly also.

English understatement sometimes makes me laugh. 

Edit: To be fair, I've called becoming type 1 diabetic irritating. 

Scary stuff that and quick realisation that something was seriously wrong on the pupil's part.

Poor rigging is still a surprisingly big cause of sport aviation accidents.

jk

That's an interesting thought, I guess it could have had something to do with the wind and where a good place to land was too?

They go damn above the ground they land upon, having watched it again, more than a few hundred feet. I hope they still got to have a decent enough holiday in the circumstances.  

A quick realisation that he needed to hang on, but he might have been better off with an even quicker realisation that he should let go!

Is that really how you land by dragging your bollocks on the ground?

E

Why was he hanging on to the bar one-handed (with the other grasping the instructor's leg a times)?  Wouldn't it be better with two hands grasping the bar? 

My guess: Shifts his centre of mass towards the centreline of the aircraft without forcing the pilot grossly off centre with his holds on the cross bar.  As well as obvious flight control benefits, this allows the instructor to grab him to take some weight without being subject to such a large torque upsetting his other hand on the control bar and his position.

I guess that's basically just where his hands started, one on the bar, one on the pilot, slipping down as he loses grip. I doubt with someone hanging from the bar the pilot could keep the speed back sufficiently.

Jk

Bet he missed the herd of deer in the tree line! 

There's not much hang gliding near Mississippi - too flat

I once tried to hand glide off the garage roof with my action man handglider. It was massive to a small child but..... Hamlet moment 

Maybe you should try it and tell us?

I'd imagine if your shitting yourself and think you might die very shortly, your thought process is more like "f*ck, f*ck f*ck......."

The pilot is being absolutely slated on the HG/PG forums.  No extra checking, could have landed immediately if he'd positioned the passenger on the bar.

Still, not as bad as the kiwi tandem pilot of dropped a passenger and decided to eat the gopro memory card to hide the evidence.

Maybe not so much on this glider but many have weird shaped and smooth bars, not designed to be hung from.  Hooking a hand through the pilot's harness may have been more secure.

Either way, a monumental screwup by the pilot compounded by his failure to land immediately in the area to his right. 

Easy with hindsight though, like I said if you think you are about to die, logic doesn't enter into it.

only a stuntman could have hung on like that for so long ...

I can only assume, as it's an obvious solution and he seems to make a brief attempt to position for it, that landing to the right wasn't possible due to control issues.