Terrifying moment plane crashes into paraglider, sending her spiralling through the air before emergency parachute saves her
Shocking footage captured the moment a plane crashed into a paraglider, shattering his parachute and sending him spiraling through the air.
A video clip recorded by thrill-seeking Sabrina, 44, shows her nearly killed by a small plane racing over Schmittenhöhe Mountain at the eastern end of the Kitzbühel Alps in Austria.
Remarkably, no one was killed in the incident as both Sabrina and the pilot were able to land safely.
The clip, taken from a camera placed on the skydiver’s legs, shows him initially floating freely over the picturesque landscape.
As the sound of the approaching plane increases, Sabrina turns her head to the left.
The plane appears over the mountain below and zooms in, striking the glider’s parachute and severing its cables before it has a chance to react.
It misses Sabrina by about a meter, but it shatters her thin canopy into pieces, causing her to fall to the ground.
As Sabrina soars over the Alps and descends rapidly, she has the presence of mind to free herself from a tangle of ropes and wires and finally deploy her emergency parachute just in time.
This is the moment a plane hits a paraglider, shattering its parachute as it spirals through the air.
Footage recorded by thrill-seeking Sabrina shows her nearly killed by a small plane racing over Schmittenhöhe Mountain at the eastern edge of the Kitzbühel Alps in Austria.
Within seconds of the terrible crash, the paraglider is seen screaming in panic, but with quick thinking he manages to save his own life.
After falling to the ground, Sabrina was soon picked up by a police helicopter and taken to a local airport.
According to officials, the small plane, meanwhile, survived the shock collision and managed to land safely at Zell am See Airport.
The 28-year-old pilot said he had no way of avoiding hitting Sabrina.
In a post on Instagram, Sabrina said: ‘I still can’t believe I’m actually sitting here writing this and other than a few bad bruises and some general injuries there is absolutely nothing going on.’
The paraglider regularly shares videos of his adventures on his social media and has more than 8,000 followers, but his latest clip garnered 175,000 likes in less than 24 hours.
In March, a powered paraglider pilot nicknamed ‘The Human Swan’ cried during an inquest into the death of a pilot he collided with in mid-air, explaining that he was ‘paranoid’ due to a previous accident.
Climate activist Sacha Dench was attempting a record-breaking 3,000-mile journey around Britain when the plane he was flying collided with the plane piloted by 54-year-old Dan Burton.
Mr Burton, from Devon, died in the incident near Loch Na Gainmhich in Sutherland, Caithness, on September 18, 2021. Ms. Dench survived but was seriously injured.
The expedition, called the Round Britain Climate Challenge, began in June and aimed to highlight the issue of climate change ahead of the COP26 conference in Glasgow later that year.
Ms Dench had previously won acclaim for a similar expedition chronicled in the BBC documentary Flight Of The Swans; This discovery saw it following the path of swans migrating from Russia to the UK, and it was later nicknamed the ‘human swan’.
Giving evidence to a fatal accident inquest (FAI) at Tain Sheriff Court, Ms Dench recalled that she had previously collided with another pilot while paragliding on a hill in Wales.
Several times during the hearing, Ms. Dench said she could not remember specific details and at one point broke down in tears, saying: ‘It was four and a half years ago and I hit my head pretty hard.’
