The sad truth about gliding and soaring

so about 17 years ago I had a friend's dad asked me if I wanted to go out for a glider flight and I said sure why not about two months after that someone from the club rang and asked would I be interested in going for a course that they've got coming up and I said yeah yeah why not since then I've been gliding about 17 years now and haven't stopped since so the chap who called was a nice guy called Trevor and he was a big driving force in our club he flew a pw5 he was very enthusiastic about gliding and promoting the sport to others and he was an instructor and on the committee and all that two years after I joined the club Trevor was involved in a fatal accident in a gliding contest so Trevor was about 200 feet above the ground only a couple of kilometers away from the Airfield and the finish line of the contest when he tried catching that last thermal to get away back there field his GPS track showed that his ground speed decreased and he ended up probably spinning into the ground sadly hit a fence with a concrete post in the middle of it so in 2021 I lost another friend a good friend Christian who's a glider pilot here in New Zealand he was flying in riiti in Italy and I think in a gliding contest and sadly at the Hills Christian was a really lovely guy and a great sense of humor on him and we would often catch up at lighting contests around New Zealand so I know at least three people who have died flying gliders another chap was in the South Island spun into the Hills in 2017 we had two fatal accidents one a glider crashed into the mountains in the South Island the other was a pipstrel self-launching electric glider that had its battery Banks catch on fire in 2016 we had two fatal accidents it was a pw5 that spun in over the Airfield with a new student on board and an ash crashed into the mountains of the South Island in 2014 we had an asw20 spin into the hills just south of Auckland jury gliding Club so in 2009 I pick 20 managed to crash into the mountains and in the last 10 years we've had two fatal Top Lane accidents here in New Zealand and the list goes on so in the last 27 years we've had 21 fatal gliding accidents here in New Zealand that's one fatal accident every 1.3 years and with only 700 glider Pilots at the most any one year flying here in New Zealand the odds are not good and this is why it's so important to try a pure Trek if you go missing in the mountains or somewhere remote people will have a chance to find you quickly which could potentially save your life try out pure track today make sure people know where you are at all times we've all heard the old saying it's more dangerous to drive to their field than it is to actually go flying and that might be true for commercial Aviation but it's definitely not true for gliding or general aviation friend of the show Clemens from chess in the air has done a really good in-depth analysis of what are the chances of dying in the sport that we love check out his analysis I'll put a link to his website in the description below for gliding in Germany and France the chance of dying is one death in every 50 000 hours of flying or another way to put it the chance of dying in the next thousand hours of flying is two percent it also shows that flying gliders is twice as dangerous as riding motorbikes now I know two people personally who have died riding motorbikes so they're also extremely dangerous angle lighting is more dangerous by than general aviation but not by a huge amount interestingly gliding is less dangerous than paragliding or skydiving or downhill mountain biking but it's miles more dangerous than driving a car or normal Road cycling commercial flying is the safest activity you can participate in that's considered extremely safe so why do we do it honestly I think most people think that these accidents and incidents will never happen to them we don't think we'll make the same mistakes that countless other people have also to some extent you must be aware of the risks and be prepared to accept those risks quite frankly gliding is one of the most rewarding Sports I've ever done the community of people you meet and friends you make is incredible and you get to see amazing sites and do things that normal people just never get to experience the views are stunning I'm here in Raglan I've flown over this beautiful cloud of the country many times that's the point of this video it's not to scare people away from the sport of gliding but to remind everyone just how dangerous it is and how much respect it needs the amount of risk we take is up to us that is something we can control we can mitigate risks and catch errors and problems before they happen that's why checklists are so important that's why we should practice our spinning regularly this is why we need comprehensive training and why it's so important to subscribe and like the channel and watch all the pure Glide videos that have been created and be aware of psychological traps such as get home itis and just pushing your boundaries further than you should you know you should just put it in a paddock because you're getting too low but you just try and catch that last little thermal don't succumb to it it's not worth your life personally for me the sport is worth the risk and I love every minute of it [Music]

Channel: Pure Glide

Views: 234,763

Keywords: gliding, soaring, ventus, ventus ct, gliding nz, Aviation, Flying, Glider, Soar, Fly, new zealand, pricing, gps, garmin inreach, inreach, spot, findmespot, tracker, gps track, segelflug, Gleiten, glissement, envolée, weather, accident, incident, flying accident, flying incident

Id: kHCJajRSOUc

Length: 5min 55sec (355 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 10 2023