Discipline
Paragliding XC
What went wrong ?
Safety issues or accidents happen in paragliding competitions, from minor to serious. Currently, there is no formal public communication about these, even serious, accidents. Pilots, teams, and the wider community remain uninformed, which affects safety awareness and trust in the organization.
What would you propose ?
1. Any serious accident should be publicly and officially communicated by the organizer within 1–2 days.
2. Communications should include:
- Announcement of an investigation into the incident, providing context. A detailed report should follow and be publicly available. Based on it, recommendations will be proposed to prevent such situations in the future.
- Monitoring the pilot’s condition, if applicable, until hospital discharge.
3. In severe cases, the organizer and overseeing organization must notify the community via official channels.
4. Consider having a separate institution handle investigations and pilot condition monitoring to ensure impartiality.
5. Respect pilots’ safety and comfort by anonymizing personal data if they wish.
6. Define clearly:
- Which incidents require individual investigation and public communication.
- Which incidents should be recorded in a safety database, described only by involved pilots, and summarized later in a CAT1 event safety report or annual safety report.
- Provide a convenient, pilot-friendly way to report safety incidents during competitions.
2. Communications should include:
- Announcement of an investigation into the incident, providing context. A detailed report should follow and be publicly available. Based on it, recommendations will be proposed to prevent such situations in the future.
- Monitoring the pilot’s condition, if applicable, until hospital discharge.
3. In severe cases, the organizer and overseeing organization must notify the community via official channels.
4. Consider having a separate institution handle investigations and pilot condition monitoring to ensure impartiality.
5. Respect pilots’ safety and comfort by anonymizing personal data if they wish.
6. Define clearly:
- Which incidents require individual investigation and public communication.
- Which incidents should be recorded in a safety database, described only by involved pilots, and summarized later in a CAT1 event safety report or annual safety report.
- Provide a convenient, pilot-friendly way to report safety incidents during competitions.
Issue category
Comments
Completly agree. Last PG world was again a perfect démonstration with an institution refusing to communicate.
I think this ties into the proposal here around Just Culture
Charter and intentional design of the accident reporting database https://gagglereport.org/node/26
I believe the discussion should not solely revolve around the accident report itself. While such reports can and should be detailed—covering aspects such as the pilot’s profile and the organizational conditions—it is equally important to focus on how to use this information effectively to prevent similar incidents in the future.
Accident reports should be submitted within a defined timeframe following the conclusion of the event. It is not appropriate to place additional pressure on the Organizer, Meet Director, or Safety Director during an ongoing competition, as their primary responsibility must remain the safety of all participants. Submission of reports by both organizers and pilots should be mandatory, and failure to comply should result in sanctions, such as disqualification from organizing or participating in subsequent events.
A clear communication protocol must be established. Journalists are often the first to share information following an incident, but without a structured process enabling organizers to communicate accurate details to the public, the impact on our sport and our community can be severe. A consistent and transparent communication strategy is therefore essential to safeguard the reputation and integrity of paragliding as a sport.
Thank you for your comments, Julien and Luis. I’d like to clarify a few points:
- I’m assuming communication about a serious accident within 1–2 days, not the submission of a report - the latter, of course, should happen within the established post-event timeframe.
- The public communication strategy should be developed based on the principles of Just Culture; however, it is a smaller change in itself and could probably be implemented separately.
- Creating a user-friendly system for collecting safety incident reports may be considered “out of scope” and and implemented through a dedicated group.
In reply to Thank you for your comments,… by Mateusz Gajczewski
Great Mateusz. I see one piece of the system you refer to collect accident report as very wild, raw and community based. I'm willing to work on a "Gaggle Report" to provide almost immédiate feedback of what happened during a Task. Collision, switch of turn, incident, late stop... Pilots could come to this plateform and fullfill a blalzing fast report. We would still need better detailed report towards the institution (from pilot or organiser) but at least we would have something and could compare report from the field and institutional ones 😅