Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase Mayhem. My guest today is Niko Lipko. He is a Ukrainian-Russian-born pilot who's currently living in Chamonix and also a mountain guide. And he reached out to me a few months ago with the subject line, the scariest flight of my life. And I thought, oh, interesting. I'll have to look into this. I've been doing some of this fear injury work with Jessica Love. She's working on a thesis on this. And so I read the email and found it quite interesting and got him on the show. And we recorded this the first time about a month ago now, and the recording didn't work. There was something wrong with my platform. Or I record all these podcasts.
And so we thought we had it, and we didn't. So I had to reach out again, and we did it again. And because we've done it twice, I've had quite a bit of time to think about this. I don't want to give it all away, but Niko's scary flight in Chamonix was on quite a boisterous day. He has been flying five years. He was flying in high-end ENB and had a massive frontal and really hard inflation. And on the re-inflation. And the A-lines, A-1s at the Mayons popped the one line, which leads to four lines. And so it left his aircraft in a very unstable situation, which resulted in the toss. And so you'll hear all about that. But I'd like the takeaway here.
And I think, as you'll hear in the show, I try to remain pretty neutral. Niko is of the opinion that it's a fault with the wing and the fault to the manufacturer. And I don't think it's a fault to the manufacturer. And I don't think it's a fault to the manufacturer. And I don't think it's a fault to the manufacturer. I read the manufacturer's response to this, which I thought was pretty reasonable. And, you know, these wings are load tested. And that's where a wing is qualified. And we often put stress, not often, but there are times on really big days where we could put stress on it beyond the load testing. And normally that works out. Sometimes it doesn't. And in the show, again, I point out a couple of cases. And I know personally where it didn't. And I just, I don't, I have to say, I don't fully agree with Niko's takeaway here that this was a fault of the manufacturer.
I don't think it was. I think if there was, you know, if this was a problem, we would see this kind of thing over and over again. And it would be a recall. So anyway, I just wanted to put out there that I think the takeaway here should be that, you know, we need to check our gear, the gear fitting. So anyway, I just wanted to put out there that I think the takeaway here should be that, you know, we need to check our gear, the gear fitting.
And I, again, I just, I don't think this is necessarily leads to a manufacturing fault. I did reach out to Triple Seven to get their reply to this. You'll hear, I read their response to this and I haven't heard anything by the time we put the show out. So I haven't gotten a response. If I do, then I'll put that out in a future show, but you be the judge. It's a fun story. And there's a lot of takeaways here. Enjoy. Cheers.
Niko. Take two, buddy. And we're going to try this again. Welcome to the Cloudbase Mayhem. The first recording, unfortunately, didn't work out. So we'll have plenty of practice this time around. But welcome to the show. And you sent me an email quite a while back that said it was the scariest flight of my life. And I thought, oh, OK, that sounds interesting. You know, we've been I've been working with Jessica Love. I don't know if you've heard of her, but she's been a paraglider a long time and spent a bunch of time in beer. And she's done a lot of work for her thesis on fear injuries. And it doesn't sound like you really had a fear injury from this one. But let's give the audience a little bit of background on on who you are. And we'll we'll stay out of the politics, like you mentioned last time.
But you're you're you've got an interesting background and now you're living in Chamonix and you're crazy about flying.
Yeah. Hi, Gavin. Thanks for having me again.
Yeah, I learned a lot from this podcast and I hope the listeners will learn something from this one as well.
So, yeah, I moved to France six years ago and this is about the time when I started flying. So I started flying like one year after I moved here and it's it's kind of started to become more and more my like, well, not the primary sport, but one of the things I'm like super passionate about at the beginning, it was just like, yeah, simple, like fly flying. I didn't even consider at some point I would progress to anything like serious pilot pilot wise. But like every year I flew more and more. Last year it was 250 hours.
So I also started out the year. Yeah, it was. It was it was a nice one and also was like a nice season in the Alps. So I flew some big 200K triangles. I also do climb and fly because I'm a mountain guide. It's actually also like a career change because before moving to France, I worked in software and hardware engineering for many years. And at some point I was just fed up with living in a big city. With all the stress and the traffic and everything. So I moved to a tiny village in France to get to follow my passion for for the mountains and paragliding became one of the things that really complements everything nicely.
Was it initially was the initial attraction just getting down because you're a mountain guide and spending a lot of time at altitude? I mean, that's kind of why the sport was invented back in the day. It was to basically get down. Was that was that it was when I first saw paragliding, I had no idea you could fly anywhere. I thought you just launched and you flew down. That's I didn't understand that there you could fly cross country. Was that kind of the same for you?
Yeah, it's a good, good question, because, you know, like at the very beginning, I had like no clue about flying. Even more than that, I was super terrified of flying in general. So before I tried paragliding for the first time, I think it was 2012. I was so much afraid. I
was so afraid
of like, just taking a plane flight, you know, I would stay like glued to my seat for for the whole time. And, you know, like when I went to Chile and Argentina, like I spent 13 hours just like staring at the window and yeah, no, no sleep on this transatlantic flight. And then in 2012, it was actually August 19, 2012. I remember the day because it's one of those like very rare days. When it was possible to top land on the summit of Mont Blanc. So I booked I booked a tandem flight in Chamonix and we just, you know, like flew around for half an hour and it felt completely awesome. You know, like I wasn't scared, like like after one minute into the flight, I had like zero fear and it just felt so nice and supportive, you know, like like with the wind and everything.
It felt absolutely awesome. And after we landed the tandem pilot, he asked me, like, do you want to fly? Do you want to go to the summit of Mont Blanc? I thought he was joking, you know, like because like how it's possible, how I mean, like how can you start at 2000 meters and then like fly to 4800 meters? It felt like like like a joke. But he was serious. He was like he was totally serious. So he was like, you can pay me 600 euros and we go there. I was like, no way. And I refused because I didn't have like enough cash with me and I wasn't warm up for the occasion. But yeah, it felt like.
It was really
awesome. Like, how could it be that with like this piece of, you know, like lightweight fabric, you can actually like travel distances. So initially when I started, I thought like, well, it's just like so cool, you know, like to be just flying around, like flying, just this just the feeling of flying. This is what was something attractive. And also when I started. So it took me six years to actually book a course in Chamonix to learn how to fly on my own. So I
started in 2018,
five years ago when I actually did the course and initially I wasn't one of the best students in the group. And, you know, like the instructor, I could feel like the instructor's attitude, you know, like I wasn't one of the top guys because some people were just natural. They would just, you know, go and try the reverse launch and it would be like all like like they were doing this for forever. And for me. It was really hard to learn. So it was completely like something I didn't feel natural because, for example, I've been skiing for 30 years and paragliding was something that I learned from scratch.
And I was already like an adult, you know, so it's harder to
learn when you're older.
Yeah, it's it's such such a difference because I have a daughter and she started skiing when she was less than two years old. And, you know. Like children, they just pick up everything so natural. Yeah. Yeah. So for me, it was really hard. But like after one year, it was even less than than a year of flying. One day I took off from Chamonix and then I flew like 40 kilometers and came back. And I didn't even plan that, you know, because I didn't have like any instrument apart from a tiny acoustic vario. So I only flew like the terrain that I knew back then. So no like GPS, nothing. And then I came back. I was freezing cold and yeah, I was literally shivering because, you know, like after two hours, it was end of March.
So at three thousand, like two hundred meters and I only had like lightweight soft shell and very thin jacket. So, yeah, I was freezing. And also like without without pod harness, it was just like open harness. I was flying. But it felt so awesome. Because they were like glider planes flying below me. And I was like, wow, this is I mean, like, yeah, it's it's it's yeah, it's crazy. And then I got hooked, you know, like into XC flying. And then one day I saw it was February, I think. And I saw tracks which were going to four thousand meter peak, which is not not far from from the lift. And I thought I could do it just like.
In a day and yeah, I took my glider, which back then, like with all the kit was maybe 15 kilos and I just climbed this one and I flew down. And so this is how I got another passion is like climbing stuff and then flying off. And since then, I did twenty four, four thousand meter like takeoffs in the Alps and there are there are more to go. So we have eighty, eighty two, four thousand meter peaks here. So, yeah, I have a bunch of things to do. And since last year, I started doing tandems. So I did a tandem course and I just received my tandem qualification last month.
So it's it's another way to to share, you know, like some wonderful moments in the air. And
is your is your main source of income? Now, the the the guiding with the climbing guiding or is it still software engineering?
Well, it's kind of in between because, you know, like with my certification, I have to validate it in France. And it's well, it's time consuming because France is a great country. I mean, it would have been just like a paradise if it wasn't so bureaucratized. Like there is a lot of paperwork and everything is is super slow. So even though I received my. My like guide license last year to validate it in France, it takes it takes time. So it's still like in this transition period. So in order to be able to work in France, I still need to get the French equivalent. And so my license is valid everywhere but France, because this is this is this is how it works.
So like in Italy, it's valid in Switzerland and it's valid like everywhere else. Yeah, it's valid. I mean, like it's international license. So, yeah, yeah, but here I need to get a special paper.
And before we get to your incident, just a couple of things I wanted to hit on. The first is you've done either quite a bit or some SIV with with Fabian and Malin,
correct? Yeah, that's that's correct. So far, I did five SIV courses. Yep.
Five. Wow, that's great. You're kind of doing one a year.
One a year on average. Yeah. And this is what I plan to do. Great.
Good for you. And you said you said we skipped over some, but you said you were in a big city and you were you were kind of tired of it. You wanted to get out. What where where was that? Was that in Russia?
Yeah, that was Moscow. That was Moscow. So because like this is the take two and the listeners don't have the idea about my background. So I'm like half Russian, half Ukrainian. So I have Ukrainian dad and Russian mom. And this is like, you know, another living proof. Why? Why this war is like, yeah, it's just nonsense. And it should be should be stopped. Yeah.
Where are your parents now?
My dad is in France and my mom, unfortunately, is still in Russia.
And we didn't touch on this last time at all. But what's what's happening with her? Where where where is she? And is she what's what's her take on that? Give me give us the 60 second. What's her take on this?
You mean. Like on the well, on politics or. How does
she feel about what's going on? Yeah, not not not so much even politics, but just I'd love to you know, I think people, you know, we only get what's what we see in the media and we only get depending on what echo chamber you're in is the media we get. I'd just be curious from a local, from someone who lives there and is in Moscow, what what does your mom think about all of this?
I can tell you that. So far, I know only two people who actually would support like this whole crazy stuff happening and none of my friends really like no, no one really supports that. And especially, you know, like, of course, it comes to specific demographics and like education and yeah, general like exposure, you know, like to the news, I would say, and like general background. But yeah, I would I would say that on average people. Don't support that. I mean, it's just yeah, it's it shouldn't be happening. You know, like in 21st century, we should have words like this. It's it's not normal. For example, on my mountain guide course, I did it in Kyrgyzstan and most of the like aspirants, they were coming from they were from Russia.
They were from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and like never, ever. We had any. Issues on like the nationalistic, you know, like drought, I would say. I mean, yeah, I have so many friends and relatives on both sides. And of course, like no one wants this. Yeah, it's obvious because, you know, like my friends from Ukraine, those with whom I did the guide training now instead of, you know, like working in the mountains, they are like at war. Yeah. So I think that this is this is plain wrong.
Madness. It is madness, crazy. Yeah. Well, I feel for your mom and your friends. And it must be very tricky situation for you, you know, and as so many are, you know, both citizenships, it's you know, there there should be one one happy family up there. It's crazy. Yeah, that would be great. You see it. So that would be great. I mean, well, maybe maybe someday. Well, let's talk about your incident. Appreciate it. It was scary.
We've already talked about this. We'll do it again. But pretty scary incident with a pretty happy outcome, I would say. But take us through what happened that day.
Okay. So it was last year, almost exactly a year ago. That year, I changed my harness and I changed my glider. So I had a brand new glider, 777 Rook 3, but we can talk later about it. And I think that was the flight number 13. So I took off from Chamonix on a fairly strong day, but nothing crazy. I mean, like the thermals were maybe five seconds, five meters per second. So it was strong, but not really like outrageous. This is a good thing. And then like one hour into the flight, I had a collapse.
So I was like below two cumulus clouds and I decided to move from one to another. There was obviously like some turbulence in between, like some sink. And I had a collapse, which I reopened. And so like, well, I mean like... Pumped the brakes. And on reopening, like there was a very severe shock. And like it felt immediately that something went wrong. So like looking up, I could see, you know, because like first I looked up, I could see like the collapse opening. And so I thought, okay, fine. Like no problem. Like flying further. But then like the glider didn't feel right.
So I look up again and I could see like... There is a line in the air, which is not attached to anything. And it turned out that on this reinflation, the A1 line snapped at Meillon. So it means that I lost four attachment points in the middle of the glider. Because the way the glider is designed, so like the A1 line goes from Meillon, then it splits in two, and then it splits in two another time. So I lost four attachment points. And at this point, like the glider became irrecoverable. So it was going between stalling and parachutal. So like hands up and it would go like parachutal, just like falling down.
And if I touch a little bit of brake, it would stall immediately. So my descent was maybe around 10 meters per second, according to the GPS track. And any rotation? Well, it was unstable, obviously, because, you know, like it was like in the middle, but still like it was the left side. So, yeah, there was some spinning, but I tried to...
Nothing violent. It was more just coming down really fast. It
was coming down. Obviously, it was hard to maintain the course. You know, like I could... I tried to maintain the course as much as possible. But the problem, as I said, like the moment I touched the... The brakes, it would just like stall and like would go into backflip. And so, yeah, it was not really like super stable because like even in backflip, like normally the gliders, they are not like super stable. You can try to adjust your course in the... Yeah, in like using the weight shift. But still, yeah, it was kind of like a bit shaky. And I was at 800 meters above the ground. So I decided not to deploy. I didn't
want to deploy
my reserve immediately because thanks to Fabian, I remember this story that Fabian told us during the first SIV I did with FlyU about the guy who deployed his reserve at 2,000 meters in Annecy. And then with the valley wind and the strong thermals, he started his XC flight under his reserve. So he actually... He actually crossed a couple of valleys from what I remember. And with the rescue services following him on the ground, watching him in the air. And it must have been like a very scary experience because, you know, like when you are under reserve and you have like zero control on like what's happening,
it's... Yeah, it's seriously scary. So I remember this story and I decided that I would wait because also like in this area above Passy, there are many cliff faces. So if you actually get dragged into one of these faces under your reserve, it's going to be ugly. And in about one minute, I lost maybe 500 meters or so. And then I decided it was time to throw. So I deployed the reserve, killed the glider as much as possible. And yeah, basically this was time to prepare for impact. Because even though I had the steerable reserve, like steerable square, so it doesn't give you like much steerability, I would say, with only one and a half to one glide ratio.
And then I hit the ground really, really hard. Because initially when I just deployed, it was super thermic. And I was actually going like up or staying at the same altitude, just with the strength of... So it's possible to see on my track log, I was in zeros for some time. And then I started to go down like pretty quick, like five to six meters per second. And I was with a fairly good margin on my reserve, like a hundred kilos out of 125.
So the
reserve was rated for 125 and your all up weight was a hundred? Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
So like 20 to 25.5. Yeah.
So that's like a 10 %
margin is like what's recommended by most SAV instructors. Sure. And unfortunately I couldn't really land on my feet and do PLF because I was still in some rotation when I was going down. And I think this was coming from like thermic activity, you know, like because it was really thermic in this area. And then later when I was on the ground, I could hear like the thermals coming in and like the wind noise, it was really, really strong. So I guess it was just like swirling effect of the thermal that was putting me in some sort of like rotation. And you can - Least
side of the thermal or something or?
I don't really think that it was like a least side because you know, like the thermals - No, not
least side, but least side of the thermal potentially. You know what I mean? You sound like you were in pretty sinky air. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Around very thermic conditions. Yeah.
That's exactly the case. And so I hit the ground, like pretty hard. And unfortunately it was with my back, even though I managed to like to exit the pods and I was in vertical position with a reserve attached to my shoulders. So like everything was okay in terms of preparation for the impact, but it was just a bit not enough luck in terms of the area where I landed. It was fairly steep slope. And also because I was in rotation, I couldn't control how I land. And that's how I landed on my back. And that, yeah, probably like the worst possible scenario. And I was really scared for my limbs, you know, like, yeah, like the first idea.
Oh, no, I don't want to be paralyzed because, yeah, obviously, you know, like movement is absolutely essential. Part of everyone's life. But yeah, for mountain guide, it's even more essential. So I was really scared, but luckily I could move. my legs I could move my hands so that was okay but of course there was like severe shock with like five to six meter per second descent rate and another thing as I was going down under my reserve why I actually say that it was like the scariest flight for like for two reasons because first of all I had ACL surgery just five months before that so you know like with five months post op you are still not not really solid like to take any sort of significant impact because you can injure the knee and the second thing is because just two or three weeks before the accident I repacked my reserve myself and so I
if it doesn't work now then I'm dead because there is no no other option because like the glider is not flyable anymore and I only had one reserve even though I had a harness with two reserve compartments was like a brand new harness I had only seven flights on it but I didn't install the second reserve just yet because I thought well okay it's like still beginning of the season you know like it's nothing crazy but it's kind of like a little bit of a little bit of hard to imagine that at some point your glider would just break in the air especially a brand new one so after I yeah so after I impacted the ground I thought that I'm fine and I actually called the rescue services straight away because they might have received like calls from like some people telling that there was a reserve deployment so I called the rescue services i told them that i was fine and there is no need to rescue me and then i called my friend
because you know as i as i said i was uh five months post-op so i wasn't supposed to carry 20 kilo backpack uh downhill so i called my friend to come and uh help me bring the pack down and then i started to pack everything and by the time i finished packing i had very very strong pain in my lower back and in my abdominals and it was getting worse and worse and so i was like oh no i i hope you know like it's not like some sort of internal uh injury so i called the rescue services again and i asked them what would they suggest and so they put me on the line with the doctor and the doctor started to ask like multiple questions like where the pain is like local like given like the
grade one to ten and all this stuff and then they told me like there is a risk of internal bleeding like according to uh my answers and so they would rather come and pick me up and bring me to the hospital so then the helicopter came again like uh hats off to uh french rescue uh i i think these guys they're they're just amazing you know like because they landed the helicopter in a tiny opening i mean like it didn't land completely because it was steepish slow but uh like the rotor blades they were like one and a half or two meters away from the trees and it was such a thermic days and you know like and it was windy and it's it's crazy like their their skill is absolutely amazing so thanks a lot to these guys they brought me to the hospital and there i did like a bunch of checks spent there a few hours in an emergency room and yeah miraculously nothing was uh broken just like severe shock and uh i had a lot of neck pain and lower back pain for the next few weeks but uh yeah i had to rehab it for a bit but nothing nothing broken must
have must have had some pretty serious internal bruising and stuff that that stuff takes a long time to yeah to get over yeah several things that strike me is is quite fortunate is just having this accident and passy and not and you know a million times a day and i'm in other places in the world where you wouldn't have had the helicopter option and i mean it is quite a cliffy area there i can see how you were hesitant to throw and so you've had a year to think about this and a year to kind of unpack it all before we get into your thoughts on the the glider itself anything you've changed since this incident in terms of gear
preparation training anything i i don't know is there anything you wish you would have known uh a year ago that you know now that would have potentially changed the outcome although the outcome in many ways was very good but is there anything you would have done differently so
yeah i i thought anything you do
differently now yeah
uh there are like some things that i changed and some things that i didn't do and some things that i didn't do and some things that i didn't do and i would say i would keep doing the way i did before because i think this is what saved my bacon that day um so uh what i would change from now on and like something that i started doing like a year ago from now on i would only fly the equipment of the top brands i mean like everyone decides what the top brand in paralyzing is but uh i just think that you know like some companies they devote more attention to quality control than than the others because even like the smaller companies then they sometimes make outstanding products which are really good and which in certain categories can outperform the others but uh i think the quality control is just not the same and like overall you know like amount of resources and time spent for rnd yeah it's uh something that finally uh might affect the overall quality and safety of the product um what i would uh also do i would say that i would try to minimize uh flying without reserve i mean in some countries uh like flying without reserve is illegal but here in france like you can see this fairly often especially for those guys who do hike and fly or climb and fly you know like flying in string harness uh without reserve uh without a helmet i definitely
can't endorse this sort of uh flying but at the same time for climb and fly projects especially for like high altitudes you know like bringing a reserve is is really cumbersome and uh it takes not just like the weight because like modern reserve normally weights like around one one kilo if it's like a lightweight one but uh it's just like the volume and then with the volume you're getting a bigger pack it's more difficult to move around so uh for climb and fly i i still uh do some projects without reserve but uh for hike and fly i would never even consider like doing that without reserve because uh for climb and fly in general you just go somewhere in more or less calm conditions so you don't do it like in crazy urology for example with stronger winds or with like potential thorn effect or
like in the lee side or you don't pull crazy maneuvers without uh without reserve but for general like hike and fly i don't see a point why would someone save uh one kilo of uh weight yeah
i don't i don't think i agree with you 100 i don't think this is where we try to save weight i mean it's it's it's been an interesting kind of mental exercise for me even with the X-Alps with the four campaigns there you know my reserve is i don't have the 20 percent i don't have the 20 percent that you're talking about you know i i am taking on automatically a lot more risk just by flying a reserve that's incredibly light and you know i think my reserve is 980 grams and so you know i'm going to be coming down and this is in good air i'm going to be coming down at least five meters per second if not six and that's definitely where you can start snapping stuff so yeah i mean i think maybe that's justified and something
where you're participating in a race like that where you know you're talking metric tons over the course of the race that you're carrying and every little gram counts but you've certainly got to be willing to accept the the trade-offs and that's a whole nother discussion with with lightweight gear you know the there there are definitely a lot of compromises we're we're accepting there and i think we we need to frame it that way that you're accepting more risk that when you're flying lightweight gear just it's just it's automatic you know it's physics but okay good stuff i mean i why i really kind of liked your email and the reason i've wanted to talk about this is it just we don't hear about gear failures in our sport it's usually you know our heads that make the mistake you know flying conditions that are beyond our ability flying on bad days you know just not like santa croce says you know you fly the good days and so you're we're automatically you know by flying better equipment the reason the accidents have not gone down like russ ogden says is because it's it allows us to fly in in harsher and harsher conditions we can fly more wind and wind is dangerous you have lee and all this stuff but in this case it was a it was a gear failure which is really interesting i want to read triple seven's response uh we received the glider with broken a1 line the pilot stated that the line broke after heavy frontal collapse flying in strong conditions you've just confirmed that we examined the line and found the line has the right stitching according to our production files the tread material is as per production files we used the line on the other side and performed a line break test the line broke exactly at the same value as the line sample certified eric turquoise the test center in switzerland this complies with the theory that the materials and labor work have been done as it has been done on the certified line and load and shock test wing possible conclusions the way the line broke shows that it has been a subject to a massive load higher than the one that is performed for the certification of the lines and wings for load and shock tests this kind of abnormal thing can happen where the load distribution ends up on one rather than two single points in the in a moment in time
there is always a possibility of micro damage prior to the event but this would be speculation at this point so that'd be sand or salt water or something like that since the glider and its manufacturing is up to the point of the serial wing 777 is not taking any further actions from here how does that response sit with you well
obviously i wasn't happy especially because i paid for brand new glider and the second reason is because that was my second triple seven glider i flew the night uh before that for like 100 something hours and i did my first uh bigger cross country flights with the with the knife i flew my first 100k on the night uh and And with the Rook, yeah, I was really disappointed to see that because, you know, obviously, after an accident like that, I would never, ever have the trust to fly under this wing again. Even if it's like up to specification or whatever, I just believe that there is some design issue with this particular model.
And the reason I believe that is because I saw a guy on paragliding forum who did SIV, I think it was in Annecy, and during practicing the frontal collapse, he had also A1 line snapping on his Rook 3. And in his case, it didn't break at the Mayo, it broke at the glider attachment. But anyway, you see, like there are two gliders of the same model. And they have some issue on frontal collapse. So to me, this is something to think about and to start thinking that this is not coincidence. So I think in the case of, in this case, 777 should have done more inspection and more tests, maybe.
I mean, just like flying, like maybe not this particular wing. Because I actually think that. Like this particular wing is just exactly as all other Rooks out there, but some sort of design, like decision, maybe, you know, like the combination of like the way how they split the lines and how the way is distributed, combined with the fact that Rook has extremely small openings on the leading edge. And this leads to the shocker inflation at some point. I don't know, because I think I had. Like a smaller, uh, collapse on the Rook, uh, before, before that, like maybe a week or two before that.
And also it felt like the reopening was a little bit harsh, even though the collapse wasn't like a big one. And so I, I, I don't know. It just feels that something is wrong with like particular design decision on this glider. I don't want to say like 777 make, uh, like, uh, bad gliders because I actually think like they make a very nice, very nice. Uh, and I was very happy owner of like a night and I know many people who flew like a queen and so on, but, uh, like this particular model, I believe has some issue and they just don't want to acknowledge that because if they do, they would have to recall all the gliders of this model on the market. And this might be like, yeah, really, really financially taxing on the company.
So I want to be clear here. For the listener that this is obviously all conjecture. Uh, we, you know, we don't have, you know, you or I don't have proof. We don't have backup. We don't have, uh, I, I literally know nothing about 777. So I, I, I can't even weigh in here, but I'm curious if you have, did you talk about your incident with Malin and our Fabian and our Fabian? Did they have, what was their opinion?
Yeah, of course I talked with them because actually. Actually, after this, uh, accident, I had SIV in, uh, three weeks after the accident. So I, I bought, uh, another glider and, uh, did the SIV just after that, which was really like confidence inspiring, you know, like, and which was a great way to come back to flying. Um, and both Fabian and Malin, they told me that, uh, they have never, ever encountered anything like that during the SIV courses that they run. Uh, Fabian. Fabian. Fabian had, uh, a similar, um, accident on a prototype glider that he was, uh, flying for one of the companies, but it's completely different, you know, like flying a prototype, which, yeah, this, this can happen.
I mean, probably many people saw this, uh, footage on Instagram or YouTube where the glider rips like, uh, apart in, uh, two pieces, one of the prototypes. Uh, but when you have a serial wing and it breaks in flight, I have. Uh, never met, uh, any SIV instructor who witnessed something like that because I, I talked, I think with four or five, uh, SIV instructors and also with other like, uh, training instructors in, uh, Chamonix and around Nancy, no one ever heard of anything like that. So this is something, well, I would say at least, uh, such suspicious. And also because we have this second case with the guy who had, uh.
Problem with the glider also during the frontal collapse, these, these things, they tell me that it's not, it's not a coincidence.
Uh, so I can say that I have heard of this happening in two other scenarios. One is obviously the very famous case of Kiwi, our friend that, that had his terrible misfortune and accident in Nevada. Now, Ozone did a study. On that he was on the Xeno and they, they got the glider back, you know, it had been sitting in the desert for a few weeks. It was an older glider and he had relined it. And the conclusion was that the, the knot you do at the, at the fabric end at the wing end is it's very important how that girth hitch is.
And if you don't get that right, it can compromise. I believe they said in the study, maybe 20%. Uh, I've got Russ on the show next week. I can confirm that. But, you know, when collectively you have, you know, typically this wouldn't be a big deal, but collectively, you know, he, he was flying in extraordinarily strong air and, you know, big guy, big wing. And, you know, probably the theory is we don't know for sure, but the theory is he took a huge hit and probably popped a line or maybe two lines and then zippered out. Uh, you know, so, so, and then that. That just put more and more and more pressure on the succeeding lines and, and literally came, you know, unattached from the wing.
Another case is a good friend of mine and neighbor, Nate scales was flying here. I think it's the only time he's thrown his reserve. I don't remember what year this was quite as about 10 years ago on the ice peak six, uh, Nivea, which is a bomber wing. I can, I mean, everybody can attest to that. And. You know, I don't know how many hours he had on it. I don't know anything about the, the, the, where the wing was at, but it was in incredibly strong conditions, you know, 12 to 14 meter day. So exceedingly strong, which is, you know, not typical even for here, but, but it does get that strong here. It's a very, very strong place to fly kind of like the Owens out in California. And, you know, he took a monster hit and, and blew a whole bunch of his a lines in.
In the re-inflation. So, you know, I think there are circumstances where, and I'm not saying this one way or the other with your wing. I think there are circumstances where we just put forces well beyond what a manufacturer can even build for. And, and then it's, you know, then it's a crap shoot.
Uh, if, if, if it, if it's gonna, if it's going to hold together or not. And so, you know, I think air turquoise. Obviously. Does their job and they do it very well and, you know, load tests are Ian certified and we have, we have all these things to test a glider, but I would postulate that in this case, you may have taken a hit that is beyond, uh, you know, low testing certifications, you know, whether that's acceptable or not. I don't know. Uh, I just, I don't know enough about these things. What I do need to do is reach out to. Triple seven and, and just get their, you know, further thoughts on this. I agree with you. The email seems a little, I would, I would have liked to know a little bit more than that.
Um, yeah, anyway, I, I can't conjecture either, either way. I think really the, the, the lesson here is like you said, you know, flying gear that you're really comfortable with. I think the other thing that's something that I rarely do is really check my wing. And, you know, this, this has helped affirm for me that that's a necessary part of our, you know, procedures you and I spoke last time I I've had two instances about gear. I would call massive failures that have been in my career that are my flying time that have been, uh, both were, were really scary. One was a harness. I've got a brand new harness. I won't name the manufacturer.
And. You know, the shoulder straps, uh, of the, of many harnesses are the strap itself, you know, where the buckles go through is covered by, uh, uh, kind of a webbing, you know, stretching material that, you know, so the, so dirt can't get in there and, and, you know, and, and the, the, the tabs come out of that where you can either loosen or tighten. Everybody listening knows what I'm talking about, but it's, I, I just happened out of pure sheer luck to grab the harness. I just happened out of pure sheer luck to grab the harness. To go fly it the very first time and kind of yanked on the shoulder strap to pick it up off the ground. It was a, it was a seat harness, uh, acro harness. And, and so it was, you know, they're quite heavy to reserves and everything. And I grabbed it and yanked it off the ground and the shoulder buckles weren't buckled.
So they were, they were just tucked up into this, up, up into this webbing material, the stretchy webbing material. You know, it was brand new. It was delivered to me. And the box like this, and that's not something we would ever check. You would obviously, you know, sit in the, in your simulator and adjust things, but an acro harness, you know, a seat harness, they're comfortable. I can adjust them in the air. I didn't need to do that. I just grabbed the harness and go fly it, you know, but it wasn't, if I had flown that harness, I could have just, you know, picked up, you know, tipped upside down and falling straight out of the thing. Uh, you know, cuz they had just skipped that. They hadn't done the buckle. They hadn't done the shoulder straps together. So crazy. Uh, another one was one time I went to throw my reserve and rip the handle right off the bag.
And it was, uh, bag again, that was, that was, you know, manufactured by X company and, but the, the, it had looked, you know, on inspection afterwards, because, you know, after I threw the handle off, I, you know, it's pretty hard to get a reserve out. Pretty sure still have it called a, a, a S house, but you know, I out from under your butt. That doesn't have a handle on it and it's, and it takes quite a bit of time. So it was, it was scary and it took quite a bit of time. And so, you know, we inspected it afterwards and the handle part that was sewn to the bag was literally, it had kind of three little stitches with the kind of, uh, with the kind of. Material that you would, you would make a child's project out of.
I mean, it wasn't even, it was just a joke. That was I don't know how this got through. And the company I bought it from sent it back. And the answer was, we don't know how this happened. This is absurd. I mean, it wasn't, it was, you know, so it was a whole reserve bag that again, came with the harness that was almost a toy. And so, you know, these are thankfully unusual, but to your point, I think that many companies are small and the testing procedures are, you know, I think, you know, most of this stuff is manufactured overseas and we, we just need to be mindful that mistakes, you know, they're made by humans and humans make mistakes and it's a good idea to inspect your gear.
I mean, the handle thing is just not something I would ever think of. You would just, oh, okay. When you pull the handle and it's going to, you know, but it just came off. It wasn't that I was overly aggressive, you know, that a handle should be sewn properly onto the reserve bag.
Yeah. On the, on the same note, you know, like with the company of the, the same manufacturer, when it got delivered, I had like, well, a twist in one, one of the, like lines. And. Uh, yeah, it was just like one, one of the, uh, belts was twisted and, uh, the dealer who was delivering the harness, you know, like he was really ashamed because he was like, oh, wow, how, how could they assemble it like this way, you know? And so he, he had to disassemble it, uh, like in front of me and, uh, put it back like normally, I mean, this was not like a safety issue because it was just like aesthetically wrong.
But on the same note, when I. Received my tandem glider and after I did about 20 flights on it, and also after I did like a course with, uh, like with the French, uh, with the French school, uh, so two instructors watched me, uh, at the takeoff and, uh, none of us noticed that on this, uh, tandem glider, they were like B and C gallery lines. They were crossing each other. So it's, it's really crazy because like, uh, it's, it's very, very hard to see. And. Luckily, like during the, the flight phase, uh, there were no consequences. So the glider wasn't deformed. It was flying straight, but imagine like if there was any sort of like in flight incident, it might have created friction and this friction would have, uh, destroyed the, the lines because like B's and C's, they were crossing each other at, at, at the gallery.
So like towards the glider.
Yeah. And especially important with tandem gear, you know, then you're, then you got something else to offer. Yeah, I,
I, I, I. I flew my daughter on this one, you know, like, uh, like I did like maybe 15, 15 flights with my daughter. And then I discovered that, uh, yeah, the gallery lines, they cross. Yeah. It's crazy.
Wow. Yeah. We need, need to check our gear. Well, any mental issues, any kind of fear injury that came along with this, anything you had to battle back from, or it sounds like you got back on the horse with SIV a few weeks later, but it was, was that any kind of an issue?
You know, uh, I'm actually very. Very happy that I, uh, jumped on the horse, as you say, straight, straight away. So actually less than 24 hours, uh, after I was discharged from the hospital, I was at the takeoff. Uh, my wife brought me there. I still had my previous glider, which was also made by the triple seven. Uh, and, uh, I did a flight, uh, like for one hour, I mean, like not very mellow conditions, but it was a spring day. Uh, but, uh, late in the evening, uh, and the cloud base was really high. So I basically jumped, uh, into flying straight away after the accident. And I think for me, this was, uh, the way to deal with the, with the fear injury, obviously every time now, when I overfly the crash site, and this is like particularly known area for fairly rough thermal, uh, I always have this in the back of my mind, you know, like.
Yeah, what, what happens if, uh, yeah, if I ever like have a collapse, uh, like that big. And if it, uh, I don't know, I, I think it's really, really unlikely that I ever experienced again, the gear failure like this, because, uh, I think it's like one in a million or whatever it's, it's, it's extreme, it's extremely rare. And, uh, yeah, this is again, uh, why it, it feels very strange that, uh, the same model had, uh, similar. Break down like, uh, twice. So, um, yeah, like, uh, this, uh, SIV was excellent way to, uh, also to, to push myself. So I bought a new glider with the recommendation of, uh, Malin.
So thanks to, to him. And, uh, um, I had very nice, uh, season, uh, after that. So, you know, like I actually think now that, uh, doing SIV on a new glider is probably the best, the best. Way to, to discover, uh, how it behaves in, uh, different, uh, scenarios, uh, how it reacts. And, uh, yeah, it makes you not just, uh, safer. It makes you also much more confident. Uh, you, you just trust, you trust your gear. You try to trust your instincts. And in general, this is something that I plan to do in the future. I want to keep doing SIV courses, uh, once a year. Um, and yeah, hopefully also I can do it like, uh, every time I, uh, change equipment that that's like the best way to discover it, uh, because during my, uh, SIV courses in the past five years, I deployed my reserve twice.
Uh, so just, just on purpose because I wanted to, and I think this is one of the reasons why in my accident, there were no severe outcomes. Because I knew exactly what to do. So first of all, I didn't deploy when I was very high. Uh, the second thing is that I, I knew how to kill the glider. And finally I knew how to deploy because actually like deploying your reserve, you know, like it's something that you should, you should practice. Like, even if you don't go to SIV for those listeners who like, don't do this often, like don't do this at all, even though I highly recommend it. Uh, you should just like deploy your reserve when you repack it, like, just like sit in your harness. You know, like mount it and like throw it because, uh, actually, yeah, especially like under G force, it might be not so obvious how, uh, how to do it.
Especially like if you have like a heavier, uh, reserve and also like some harnesses, they have different configurations, you know, like how far back you should reach. And those who fly with just, uh, one reserve. Yeah. Obviously, like if you are in rotation scenario, it might be extremely difficult to throw. Uh, reserve, uh, if you are in autorotation and, uh, in this, in this scenario, like, again, like, uh, I just quote Malin here. He says that, uh, 30 to 40 % of, uh, deployments when you throw in autorotation, they would go, uh, in the glider. Yeah. Straight. So, uh, yeah, it's something that I plan to do from like since last year.
Uh, I will always fly cross country. Like big cross country flights. I always fly with, uh, two reserves because it's just like another extra safety measure. Unfortunately, not something that you would do, you know, like at hike and fly competitions, which I also started doing. But, uh, yeah, as you said, you know, like it's, it comes to measuring every, every gram. Of course, like, uh, if you do X-Alps, it's even, even more crazy because, uh, you are doing this for a very, very long period of time. And, uh, yeah, because you cover. A lot of vertical and also flat distance, but even like when you do one, three days events, it's something.
Yeah. I don't, I don't think there's much of a good argument for not flying with two reserves. Uh, you know, if you're, if you, if you're not, then you're, you're compromising seriously on safety. I had a very, very low incident before the last X-Alps here doing a bivy trip that I've talked about on the show several times, but it was, you know, instantly into an auto rotation. And I've won. When the incident happened, I was a hundred meters off the deck. So I was very low when it happened. And my, my immediate reaction was to throw the reserve. I didn't have any time to deal with this. So I didn't even think about it. I just started reaching for the reserve, but then I started winding up and I had my SIV instructors, you know, voice in my head and I was flying lightweight, bivy gear. I only had one reserve, only one shot at this.
And so I solved the auto rotation first and then flip then through. Because I was so afraid. I was so afraid of that thing going into the wing and I would have been, you know, either severely hurt or dead had I, and so I was very happy for that SIV training, but it also, you know, it would have been, that would have been a nice scenario to have two reserves, just huck and huck and, and one of them was probably going to work out, but yeah, I, I think again, it comes down to, you know, what's the risk profile that people are willing to accept. And this is a fascinating story that I'm really glad you shared. Because it's just not often we hear about gear stuff and the, I'm not sure I'm fully in your, in your court that it was, it was because of the gear.
It might've just been, like you said, you know, a really big hit, but it's, again, it's all speculation. We don't really know and let the listener decide. And I, I'm just happy that it worked out for you so well and that you had a great season and, you know, yet again, reserve. We got to use them. We just had a terrible incident down in the world cup from Brazil where there wasn't one and the ending couldn't have been worse. So thanks for sharing your story, Nico, and I appreciate it. I'm going to reach out here to triple seven and hopefully get their response before this goes live. But, uh, thanks for sharing all this with me and, and, and our audience and good luck to you, bud, have some fun flights this year. And I hope to see you at cloud base.
Thank you, Gavin. Have a nice season as well and see you at the cloud base. If
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