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Piper Cub F-BAYP crashes after hitting a tandem paraglider at Meribel, France

ASN

Apparently the paragliders (a tandem paraglider) activated their reserve chutes.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

AN expert mountain pilot in a well known area…you can never have too much of a lookout in confined airspaces shared with other birds…

A couple of questions come to mind:

What electronic conspicuity device, if any , do paragliders use?

Was the instructor sitting behind, and thus with little visibility?

Last Edited by Antonio at 24 Jan 14:24
Antonio
LESB, Spain

Antonio wrote:

What electronic conspicuity device, if any , do paragliders use?

Some carry Flarm.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Safesky connects to a lot of apps that are used by paragliders and the likes.

EBZW, Belgium

Confined airspaces are a big problem near/under the London TMA. There was an airprox last year and a report written by the UK’s airprox board also between a glider and a powered aircraft (SR22) approaching Biggin Hill. The SR22’s system didn’t detect the glider (presumably using Flarm) and as they were on a direct collision course the glider was very difficult for them to spot. What makes it worse is that gliders often stay in one place when they’ve found some lift, they take up an orbit around that spot and so spend a lot of time banked making the view worse in the direction directly outwards of the orbit (which is exactly where danger is likely to come from). Full airprox board report if of interest.

Everybody keeps saying “keep a good lookout” but in many cases that can be hard. There are potential distractions in the cockpit especially when approaching/departing an airfield and needing to think about the entry procedures, noise sensitive areas, talking to ATC, etc. If you can make life a little bit easier for yourself by carrying an EC device then why not do that. It’s an extra layer of safety that can complement your normal lookout.

I carry a SkyEcho on board and have a Flarm license in SkyDemon (I believe you can get it for ForeFlight as well) and it’s definitely been well worth it as it alerted me to traffic I might not have spotted well before it was an issue.

Last Edited by Parthurnax at 24 Jan 15:52
United Kingdom

Parthurnax wrote:

Everybody keeps saying “keep a good lookout” but in many cases that can be hard.

I recall having read a study that showed that lookouts are essentially pointless unless you know what and where to look for.

ESKC (Uppsala/Sundbro), Sweden

… which is an exaggeration of course, because if it were true, we would never spot traffic that we have not previously been advised about.

Egelsbach (EDFE), Germany

Investigators will tell, but apparently the crash site is into the arrival pattern of the airfield of Meribel, where surely you don’t want to have a paraglider coming…

LFMD, France

We once came behind a paramotor just north of Schönhagen EDAZ. Same altitude, almost same course, nordo and unknown to ATC.
Being under a TMA and preparing to join the pattern at an airfield with reasonable trafic, ie 2 people looking out, helped. But had it been in the middle of the flight while sightseeing, we would have never seen it. Too little cross section when approaching from straight behind.

ESMK, Sweden

Traffic is hard to spot, and a lot of it is non-TXP, especially in the UK with their mad bust-them-all policy, but a lot of people are radiating some form of uncertified ADS-B OUT, which is why I am upgrading my TAS605 to a TAS605A. However I wonder how many paramotors are radiating anything at all, although if I was flying at GA altitudes I definitely would be.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom
115 Posts
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