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British Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association

Incident Reports (FIDA)

Once passed for publication, all new incident reports submitted via the FIDA pan Europe incident reporting system will be made available on this page.

In the meantime all the 2025/6 reports submitted via the Euro system, and passed for publication before it was shut down, can be found below. Reports submitted via the earlier BHPA online reporting system can also be found below.

This page will slowly include the remaining incident report submitted via the old Euro system.

Unfortunately, whilst all of these reports were successfully imported into the FIDA database by our German colleagues, they failed to include the status of the "publish" field which determines if a report can appear on our website.

As a result around 1,400 old Euro reports have to be reviewed and cross checked before they can be included here. This is a painfully slow process, and is likely to take some time to complete.

All incident reports submitted via the old Euro system, and approved for publication, are however available on our Incident Reports Archive page

Summaries of published incident reports are available for the following wing types:

You can also search the BHPA incident reports database by incident date, pilot, location, wing type, etc. For example, if you want to search for paraglider incidents at Hay Bluff, select paraglider from the drop down list, and enter Hay Bluff in the search box with the "or" option selected.

To search by incident date, please enter the day, month and year numerically as dd-mm-yyyy (eg. 03-12-2019).

If known, total flights flown and flights flown in the past six months are displayed below, the latter being displayed in brackets.

There are 1715 published incident report summaries for all wing types

Displaying page 22 out of 172

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Date	Pilot	Location	Wing Type	Summary	Injury
Incident Reports

Date 12.07.2013 (F10762)	Pilot male Age: 40 Rating: P Flying Experience: 23 years 1000 flights	Location Morzine, FR Wind Strength: 20-25 km/h Conditions: moderate (3m/s), moderate turbulence (occasional pilot action required to maintain control)	Wing Type Paraglider Wing: Swing Astral 6 Launch Type: foot	Summary On final approach pilot was lifted by thermal then dumped back down from 4m. Pilot suspects he may have had too much brake applied.	Injury Pilot: seriously injured (more tan 48h in hospital, fractures (except for finger, nose, toe), haermorrhage, ligament rupture), thoracic spine

Date 07.07.2013 (F10771)	Pilot male Age: 49 Rating: CP Flying Experience: 19 years 400 flights	Location Whitewool, Isle of Wight, UK Wind Strength: 15-20 km/h Conditions: moderate (3m/s), light turbulence (no pilot action required to maintain control)	Wing Type Paraglider Wing: Firebird Spider Launch Type: foot	Summary Pilot was distracted while on approach by another paraglider ground handling his wing. Pilot turned into wind too low and with too much ground speed. Landed heavily. The cow was not involved!	Injury Pilot: seriously injured (more tan 48h in hospital, fractures (except for finger, nose, toe), haermorrhage, ligament rupture), feet, legs

Date 07.07.2013 (F10769)	Pilot male Age: 33 Rating: P Flying Experience: 25 years 200 flights	Location Fan Gyhirych, Brecon, UK Wind Strength: 20-25 km/h Conditions: moderate (3m/s)	Wing Type Paraglider Wing: Ozone Swift Launch Type: foot	Summary Pilot inflated glider but had a brake line caught. He tried to deflate glider but was lifted off the hill. Glider turned and pilot crashed downwind on top of the hill.	Injury Pilot: seriously injured (more tan 48h in hospital, fractures (except for finger, nose, toe), haermorrhage, ligament rupture), feet, legs

Date 07.07.2013 (F10752)	Pilot male Age: 58 Rating: P Flying Experience: 18 years	Location Cairnwell, Scotland, UK Wind Strength: 25-30 km/h Conditions: strong (5m/s), moderate turbulence (occasional pilot action required to maintain control)	Wing Type Paraglider Wing: Nova unknown Launch Type: foot	Summary Pilot set up for reverse launch on rocky hillside. As he inflated the glider a wingtip snagged on the rocks and the glider was lifted by a thermal gust. The pilot lost control and was lifted and crashed down repeatedly before coming to rest in an unconscious state. He was attended by other pilots.	Injury Pilot: seriously injured (more tan 48h in hospital, fractures (except for finger, nose, toe), haermorrhage, ligament rupture), head injuries, internal injuries, lumbar spine, thorax

Date 07.07.2013 (F10754)	Pilot male	Location Blorenge, Abergavenny, UK Wind Strength: 15-20 km/h Conditions: strong (5m/s)	Wing Type Paraglider Launch Type: foot	Summary Pilot suffered asymmetric collapse on approach then stalled glider in from approx 20m.	Injury Pilot: seriously injured (more tan 48h in hospital, fractures (except for finger, nose, toe), haermorrhage, ligament rupture), hands, arms, shoulder

Date 05.07.2013 (F10755)	Pilot male Rating: CP	Location Bradwell Edge, Derbyshire, UK Wind Strength: 20-25 km/h Conditions: strong (5m/s)	Wing Type Paraglider Wing: Mac Para unknown Launch Type: foot	Summary Pilot was flying with excessive brake and then suffered asymmetric collapse. Glider recovered from collapse but then stalled to ground.	Injury Pilot: seriously injured (more tan 48h in hospital, fractures (except for finger, nose, toe), haermorrhage, ligament rupture), internal injuries, lumbar spine

Date 02.07.2013 (F10774)	Pilot male Age: 55 Rating: P Flying Experience: 25 years	Location Azinha, Teixoso, PT Wind Strength: 15-20 km/h Conditions: strong (5m/s), strong turbulence (constant pilot action required to avoid loss of control), leeside	Wing Type Paraglider Wing: Gradient Aspen 4 Launch Type: foot	Summary Pilot attempted to glide to the upwind side of a ridge to find a thermal but was hit by sink before getting over the ridge. This put the pilot on the lee side of the ridge. Pilot tried to escape but suffered 60%asymmetric collapse and was turned into the ground from about 15m.	Injury Pilot: seriously injured (more tan 48h in hospital, fractures (except for finger, nose, toe), haermorrhage, ligament rupture), internal injuries, lumbar spine, thorax

Date 30.06.2013 (F10764)	Pilot male Age: 45 Rating: CP Flying Experience: 13 years	Location Tehidy Barton, Cornwall, UK Wind Strength: 15-20 km/h Conditions:, not turbulent	Wing Type Flexwing hang glider Wing: Wills Wing Sport 2 Launch Type: winch/vehicle tow	Summary During tow launch pilot allowed glider to lift off too early. It then started to drift and the pilot did not correct the turn. Winch backed off and glider nosed in. Pilot did not let go resulting in broken arm.	Injury Pilot: seriously injured (more tan 48h in hospital, fractures (except for finger, nose, toe), haermorrhage, ligament rupture), hands, arms, shoulder

Date 16.06.2013 (F10747)	Pilot male Age: 48	Location Firle, Sussex, UK Wind Strength: 15-20 km/h Conditions:, not turbulent	Wing Type Paraglider Wing: Independence Cruiser 2 Launch Type: foot	Summary Student fell over while ground handling.	Injury Pilot: seriously injured (more tan 48h in hospital, fractures (except for finger, nose, toe), haermorrhage, ligament rupture), hands, arms, shoulder

Date 07.06.2013 (F10743)	Pilot male Age: 34 Flying Experience: 17 years	Location Parlick, Lancashire, UK Wind Strength: 15-20 km/h Conditions:, moderate turbulence (occasional pilot action required to maintain control)	Wing Type Paraglider Wing: Swing Arcus 6 Launch Type: foot	Summary Pilot unknowingly flew into an area of lee rotor. Pilot fell from approx 7m.	Injury Pilot: seriously injured (more tan 48h in hospital, fractures (except for finger, nose, toe), haermorrhage, ligament rupture), feet, legs, cervical spine

Last updated: 4 July 2026

Displaying page 22 out of 172

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A number of incident analysis reports are also available in the safety section of main portal, bhpa.co.uk. These are compiled from the individual incident reports submitted during the course of each year.

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