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
The Nacs should be responsible for accident reporting and investigation. if they are not able to do this then any it should be questioned whether pilots from that 'system' are safe to fly. Aggregation of all NAC data for an overall trend analysis and reporting has been suggested here -https://gagglereport.org/node/29
Essentially we want a Safety Management System in place - which all Nacs should have themselves but we dont have at an international level
The possible solution for this may tie in with the What do we want Topic: Pilots Union Safety Committee.
https://gagglereport.org/node/86
An Independent Pilots Union Safety Committee could provide most if not all the solutions proposed: the independent Investigation, Public disclosure/ transparency, Monitoring of Pilots condition if applicable etc.. and possibly at some time in the future even be the independent and impartial safety director that could end the task or race due to safety concerns.