Cloudbase Mayhem Podcast

Hang Gliders Don't Collapse — Paragliding's Blind Spots, Seen from the Neighboring Sport

To a pilot who doesn't fly hang gliders, this conversation is easy to file under someone else's story. But swap the aircraft and the problems here play out at any flying site: pilots upgrading wings while out of currency, landing accidents born of slow approaches, a culture that enforces one correct way to land, and safety debates leaning on anecdote for lack of data. The moment worth sitting with is when a 19-year instructor and a world-championship-level host both answer "we don't know — there is no data" to the question of which sport is more dangerous. That goes double for any free-flight community that has been substituting gut feel for accident statistics. Community-level data won't appear overnight, but a pilot's own flying can be recorded and checked today. That is what Klein's habits amount to: reviewing every launch and landing on a keel cam to see whether the cause was the conditions or the inputs, and rehearsing the trickiest LZ in a simulator first. Both come down to the same thing — not leaving judgment to gut feel — and that habit transfers starting this weekend.