People who have finished their training, the first thing they do is buy a B-glider. So they've gained experience, but instead of taking that extra experience on their current glider as a safety plus, they invest it directly into more performance and are basically back at the same risk level they were as beginners. You could also say, does it have to be the next better glider already, or can't I also somehow use this extra safety that I've earned through experience now.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast. Stories from the cosmos of paragliding. Today with Marcel Dürr, and I'm Lucian Haas.
Marcel Dürr is known in the paragliding scene as a pilot who undertakes unusual routes—and bivouac flights—and documents them in spectacular videos. I already spoke with him about this a few years ago in Podz-Glidz episode 56, Glacier Triangle. The reason I've invited him back now is related to a completely different topic. Recently, Marcel wrote a long post on Facebook about his impression that what is considered an acceptable risk in paragliding has gradually shifted. The post received many likes and comments and also sparked many conversations in the scene. In this episode 192 of Podz-Glidz, I'm talking with Marcel about the background.
What are the background reasons? What are the driving factors behind this development? What influence do things like social media, constant performance comparisons, developments in glider technology, or changes in typical weather patterns have? And how can a pilot develop a healthier risk culture in this situation?
By the way, I can only present these kinds of in-depth conversations because there are sponsors who financially support my work on the podcast and blog. Join in! You can find out how on the paragliding blog, specifically on the "Support" page.
Marcel, you wrote that you have the impression that what we consider an acceptable risk has gradually shifted in the paragliding scene. Where does this impression come from?
Yes, this impression has actually developed over the last few months, if not years.
And I think social media is a factor. If you maybe see a crash video like that on Facebook one day, then more and more are played. And the algorithm recognizes it and probably promotes it more and more, so I've been shaking my head more and more often. And the whole thing, of course, then gets reconciled with reality. On days when I myself concluded that it's actually on the edge to go flying, you then see on the live tracking that there are 80 gliders up in Kössen. And I then asked myself, am I wrong? Is it the others, or do I have a different assessment of the risk? Probably several points are coming together there. Once, the issue of whether I even know what risk I'm taking, or if I'm just ignoring it because today is Sunday and I really want to go flying.
But this has been weighing on me a lot. I'm a commercial pilot myself and have been flying both paragliders and commercial aircraft for 27 years. And when I compare these two worlds, it just stands out to me very clearly because commercial aviation has felt like it's actually become more conservative in terms of risk. While in paragliding, things have been moving more and more in a direction where we're willing to take on more risks, where people fly on days when ten years ago we probably wouldn't have even considered going out. And so the boundaries are being pushed further and further, bit by bit. Of course, that's also happening through top pilots, which is perfectly fine. But it's also happening through media presence. Even the average pilot is moving more and more in that direction, saying, "I want to try that now too."
This looks like a good day for flying. And I just wondered whether the general public is actually aware of the risks they're taking when they go paragliding. And that has built up so much over the last few months that I felt I had to put it out for discussion now. Just for me too, to hear if my opinion is completely controversial. Or if maybe others see it the same way.
Well, you are also a very ambitious paraglider pilot. You do some really great hike-and-fly adventures, sometimes with quite adventurous route choices. And where you set up your camps and stuff. You make great videos of it. Of course, you're also someone who might tempt others to do something like that. But now you also say you're a line pilot, and from line flying, you know the exact frameworks that are set for you. Which risks you're allowed to take or how to handle certain risk situations. Have there actually been situations for you where, as a paraglider pilot with a paraglider brain, you said, "I'm going to launch now," but then your line pilot brain put a no-go on it and said, "No, the risk is too high, you're not doing that now."
Yes, that situation actually happens again and again. And interestingly, it's often when you've set goals for yourself. It doesn't have to be something like, I have to fly particularly far today, but maybe it's just, I want to fly to this and that point. And then, of course, you're fundamentally willing and tempted to do it. And then maybe the weather conditions change or it becomes more unstable than you actually expected, and the wind gets stronger.
And those are often points where I ask myself: am I still flying safely, or do I just want to do this? And I've mostly noticed for myself that when that hope kicks in—I hope it gets better again—that's the point where I start questioning myself: is what I'm doing right now actually still okay? And I then try to basically take myself out of the situation and imagine I'm sitting at my desk at home with the situation in front of me: how would I deal with this? And that's when I think I snap back into airliner thinking and often reach the point where I say, yeah, what I'm doing isn't really justifiable anymore. And then I usually change the plan in parentheses and try to be reasonable.
It doesn't always work out, that has to be said. We're all human, we're subject to all these temptations, and it's no different for me. In commercial aviation,
as far as I understand, there are sort of real Go and No-Go limits, where you say for certain things, I'm just not flying there anymore or I'm just not taking off, or something like that. Have you set any real No-Go limits for yourself for paragliding, where you say, I'm basically checking this off and saying, if it says No-Go, then for me it's just a done deal?
Exactly, I've had those for a long time too. The big advantage in professional aviation is that, as you already said, we have standard procedures that basically incorporate the knowledge of hundreds and thousands of pilots and all the accidents, in order to have situations thought through as sensibly as possible in advance. And even someone who is just starting out, if they follow this procedure exactly the same way, they will very likely make a good decision. They don't have to decide it from scratch; a lot of experts and experience have already been poured into this procedure, so they can be quite sure that it will lead to the right outcome. Unfortunately, we hardly have that at all in paragliding, and everyone is a bit sure that it will lead to the right outcome. They rely a bit on their own experience and maybe that of five flying buddies they overheard somewhere at a pub table, and of course, they make many more mistakes themselves.
And I think that's actually a problem we have there. That's why I've tried to create my own procedures that basically serve the same purpose. Like you say, clear boundaries, and I actually have most of those boundaries in my preparation. So I look at it already: where are the risks? And in my opinion, the wind is the biggest because we can't see it. It's suddenly there and then we're right in the middle of the situation. So if I see more than 25 km/h on the altitude wind maps, the day is basically over. I don't even look further. That's a no-go decision for me. Or also at the launch site. But experience shows that once you're standing on the mountain, the temptation to start anyway is much greater.
Especially when group dynamics and all that come into play, that's why I actually try to keep my rules so tight and pick my days so selectively that I don't even leave in the first place. Then it's much easier to just say, I'm staying home.
Why do you think there aren't so many no-gos in the paragliding scene? Why isn't that lived as a culture? Are we just too individualistic? Or is it a matter of training?
Maybe both. But it's hard to say. I mean, of course, there are good and less good commercial pilots too. In that case, you tend to orient yourself more towards the lower standard and interpret the procedures in a way that the good one, let's say, has a bit more buffer at the top, but the not-so-good one can still travel safely. With paragliding, well, of course it's a hobby, it's not all that strictly regulated, that's clear. And I'm also not a fan of saying that you generally aren't allowed to fly over 30 km/h. Everyone has to decide that for themselves in the end and set their own personal limits. And if someone trains a lot and is very good at it, it's certainly possible that they can have higher limits than someone who only goes paragliding three times a year.
So it's very likely that way. Yeah, in that sense, it's hard to say if it's useful to establish hard limits somewhere. But now you're saying that
...the risk level or people's risk acceptance might not be that good. Does it somehow shift towards us being willing to take on more risk? Like, in the broad average of the paragliding scene, what you're observing. Wouldn't it make sense to really seriously think about some possibilities for how we could perhaps anchor those kinds of no-gos more firmly in people's minds?
I definitely think that's a good point. I believe it would make sense to offer some kind of decision-making aid. Not as hard limits, but maybe to prompt people to think more closely about this topic through specific questions. To make them think about what their personal limits are. And I think the air is simply a medium that is very seductive. There was an interesting comparison once with mountaineers. So, if you see someone climbing an extreme route now, we as amateurs will of course say, "Wow, that's intense." But we would never get the idea to climb the same route. And if we see a great flight on a crazy day, the temptation to try it anyway the next day is huge.
Because the air is just as transparent as it was on the days before. And I think that's often what makes it so difficult, that you don't actually see it as clearly as something like a frozen cliff face that I have to climb. Everyone says, "Yeah, obviously, that's not my league." But the air always looks somewhat similar. And even as an expert, you can't always assess it that accurately. And I think that's what makes it so difficult in the end. You
you said you saw someone fly. So one person saw them climb the wall, but they also saw the wall. The other person said someone flew, but didn't see the air that was involved. How could you make the air more visible for people? Or make the conditions more visible? Because you see these flights. You see them on social media, you check XContest and you only see that someone flew. But you see nothing about the conditions. Do you see any possibilities for how people could find out a bit more, so that they can at least categorize it better?
Well, I always like it when people write something in the comments. But of course, that's very subjective. If a top pilot writes that the conditions were relaxed, it doesn't necessarily mean a Sunday flyer would feel the same way. In that sense, it remains subjective. But weather apps are more designed for the marginal data. And even if they announce a very good day, it's still very difficult—even for me after many years—to say: is this really a relaxed, nice day for flying? Or is it one with extreme conditions? Of course, there are signs of that, but I think it's just very difficult for even experienced pilots to judge that. So I would also wish for ways for the days to be more based on their...
let's say, pleasant or categorized or classified as to how pleasant a day is to fly. There are already some initial approaches to that. But how far they actually correspond to reality is, of course, difficult to judge right now.
Let's talk a bit about this shift in risk perception, as you've described it. You could give a whole range of reasons for that. You even listed some of them yourself in your post. Let's go through them a bit. One thing you mentioned is this "poor man's effect," because people see so many great things on social media or see some amazing flights on XContest and say, okay, if they flew it, then I want to too. We just had that. This constant visibility that others are also flying. Is that really something that increases our willingness to take risks?
There are practically hardly any days left where no one is flying. That's what I've noticed. Maybe it was the same 15 years ago, but it wasn't as visually obvious.
In that sense, even on days that you might personally classify as borderline, you have to recognize when you look at it that there are people flying there, and they might even be flying far. And then, of course, you ask yourself, okay, maybe it would have worked after all. Maybe I saw it too narrowly and, I think, because of that, I'm more inclined to accept 5 km/h more wind next time, because you saw that it had more potential than you initially thought. But of course, you don't see what the flight was like, and ultimately, the only statement is "it worked this time." That doesn't mean it was safe because of it. And that is, I think, the fallacy that can arise from these isolated cases. And we don't see the others who end up hanging in the trees after three kilometers.
You don't register those in Extrakontest or when you look at it in the evening. In that sense, we only see the ones who survived—to put it bluntly. I don't want to demonize the whole thing at all. I think Extrakontest is a great thing. Same with live tracking. You can take a lot away from it and learn a lot. That's why it definitely has its place. I think we have to ask ourselves more critically to what extent this influences our standards? And how do we let ourselves get infected by it and have our healthy judgment after a weather check influenced by it? Because we know, in much crazier conditions, someone flew along there yesterday too. But that doesn't mean anything yet. I can say that, and you have to make sure of that too.
But you'd have to say Extrakontest also has a side to it, at least one side. In a way, it's like a safety curse for the paragliding scene, because you only see that someone flew, landed, and uploaded their flight. And then, at first glance, it seems to have been safe in some way. And then you'd say, okay, I'll go flying in similar conditions too. And if it wasn't just one person who saw it, but five people, then maybe those five go flying. And then we see next time—more people in the scene see that even more was flown. And so it continues, and because of that, this safety margin maybe slowly shifts. Because you always just say, more and more people are flying too, so there's the thing where you hold on.
People used to say that nobody ever flew in Föhn. Today, there isn't a Föhn day that isn't truly extreme where someone isn't flying somewhere. And people say, "Yeah, well, it wasn't that bad in that area," or "In the end, I always flew high and didn't have any problems with the North Föhn down in the valley or anything like that." And that's how those long distances get flown, because of course the thermal conditions with North Föhn are sometimes very good on the southern alpine side.
Yeah, so Föhn is a great example right there. And I think especially there, yeah, if you look back 15 years, people probably flew in Föhn conditions too. And today you see Braunegg, Kössen always goes—that's the original quote. There are a lot of people there. A lot of people, yeah. And of course, we have better weather apps and maybe see more precisely where the wind breaks through and where it doesn't.
To what extent are we now exploiting this safety margin again? We're pushing the limits more because we believe we can fly in that glider-protected area. But are we only doing it because today is Sunday and we have time? Or is it really safer today with the data than it was back then? And now the people who didn't go see 50 people flying. So it seems to be okay. Yes, the masses validate the whole thing. You can't see what's happening anyway in the live tracking. And the next day, with similar conditions, they're there too. And I believe that's exactly this habituation effect that arises from it. But whether that's really good and safer than back then, I still have my doubts. In the
You can give reasons for that: every flight that isn't flown is a safer flight. So, the people are standing on the ground, and then you can say, okay, if people don't fly, overall safety increases and you have fewer aviation accidents. At least if no one flies at all. If very few people fly and they are untrained, then maybe the relative risk increases accordingly again.
That's true. But that's not really what we're talking about here—not that we aren't flying. There are plenty of days when you can fly. I find weekends to be significant, though. By now, it almost really doesn't matter what the weather is like. People fly regardless. And that's exactly the point that bothers me. Because I think people fly just because it's the weekend. They have time and absolutely want to fly, not because the weather is good. During the week, it's not really like that. Obviously, fewer people have time, that's clear. But when there are good days, there are still many people in the air. So, I think they pay closer attention—is the weather really good?—and they go out intentionally. But on the weekend, you're off work, so you just go flying and see where it's least bad. And then you head there. And I'm just not so sure about the people you see there.
Whether, on the one hand, they are consciously aware of the conditions they're flying in, and secondly, whether it's not just, or largely, this "lemming effect" that's coming into play.
I mean, I think there's a lot of people who might have a family or something, who scrape together a weekend off, or there's also the case when you do some flight trips with flight schools or clubs, where you've taken that one week of vacation. You know. In the summer, I still have to be on the road with my family. This is my flying week. And then, of course, even in marginal conditions, there's some attempt to use every little weather window because you say you have to at least get into the air. Otherwise, you haven't had a flying vacation in that sense and might drive home very disappointed because you say the actual goal wasn't achieved.
So, flying according to a schedule is, in principle, already somewhat critical. If I say I have a week off, I have to take the conditions as they are, even if I've booked something or am at a fixed location. It's just difficult, and I believe it's simply a critical sport. And especially there, I'm already increasing my risk from the very beginning if I start under such conditions. Chains of errors—that's rarely what leads to an accident, but if I start under non-ideal conditions, I've basically already set the first link. Then only two or three other things need to happen and something occurs. And I see that as very critical. Yes, and it's not like cycling, and I think that's often confused.
Especially with beginners—they ride bikes, they go running, they go hiking, and they also fly a paraglider—and maybe for many of them, the issue of flying being in a completely different league and requiring a completely different approach isn't treated with enough respect. And from my professional background, I notice that many people take this way too lightly in my eyes.
In a comment on your Facebook post, someone wrote that they have this impression that paragliding has a bit of an addictive quality and that people are like junkies for it, wanting to get back into the air again. And just from this addictive nature, wanting to get that endorphin rush in the brain. Yeah. And that they are also willing to take much bigger risks because of it. Is there anything to that?
Yes, I think so. Yes, there's definitely something to it. And then the step of saying, "It's not perfect, but I can still fly," that's certainly not as big a leap as it was at the beginning. If you've done it a few times, you'll notice that those flights didn't go so great in hindsight, because you were constantly flying in conditions where you might have even been scared in the air, or ended up in dangerous situations. And then, with experience, you eventually start to back off and say, "Maybe that's a bit stupid; I would have liked to fly, but what did I actually get out of that flight?" But I think that's a process everyone has to go through for themselves. Yes, you can talk a lot about it, but in the end, I think it doesn't mean much until you've experienced it a few times yourself.
Well, you could
You can also argue that to progress in flying, you have to expose yourself to certain more extreme situations. Yes. I can, of course, always do gliders in calm air, but I will never learn thermals flying or flying in more turbulent air, I will never learn real active flying. You can still call that flying, and there are people who really fly like that and are very happy with it, and that is completely justified. At the same time, if you want to say, okay, I want to progress, you always have to go over certain boundaries every now and then. Or push something to the limit and say, okay, now, this might not be quite my skill level yet, but in order to be able to train in that area at all, I have to expose myself to it a bit accordingly.
Absolutely, yes. I'm completely with you, because I'm ambitious too and you have to keep pushing your limits if you want to improve, that's crystal clear. I think the important thing is that it happens within a controlled framework. Yes. So, if I've just gotten my license, saying I have to try to do my first cross-country flight on a perfect day in April might not be the right approach. Just as much as switching to a D-glider right after getting the license. So, I think it has to happen in smaller steps. The difficult part is certainly for the individual to judge—is the step now too big or is it still acceptable? And there, I believe, you naturally need experience and knowledge.
What we're doing right now—and this is certainly one of the biggest challenges and where I actually see a deficit—is that as pilots, when we're let out into the world, we actually hardly ever learn anything about risk management or anything like that. How do I deal with something like that? How do I categorize these situations? I see really big deficits there, where people take unnecessarily large risks for no real learning success, or even for not making any progress. On the contrary, it creates negative experiences that rather set you back. And in airline flying, we actually have a very good system where, with every decision, we consider what the worst-case scenario is that could happen now and how high the probability of it occurring is.
And those two are essentially pitted against each other, and you can't make decisions that are 100 percent safe unless you stay on the ground. So, you actually have to take a certain amount of risk. But it should stay, at most, in that yellow area in between—meaning it shouldn't enter the red zone. And if the maximum damage is that I crash because I'm considering flying into this lee, I'm not sure if the wind is too strong, and I think about what the worst thing that could happen is. Okay, the glider collapses and I crash; I don't want that, so that's in the red zone. How I manage it or how likely it is for the whole thing to happen, I might find hard to estimate, but it's certainly possible. In that sense, the risk of flying in there is too great. Now I have to think about what I can do to minimize this risk.
And in that case, for example, there's either the option of me looking to fly higher, flying to the other side first, or whatever, where I try to shift my decision in a direction that keeps it within an acceptable risk range. And by doing that, I also guarantee that my steps aren't too big and that I'm not taking on too much risk.
But that's maybe for paragliders. Yes.
That's for
Paragliding is relatively difficult. So, the way I see it, people do a training course, and these days, depending on the weather conditions, you can basically be finished after two weeks. You then have your A-license, you can fly freely however you want; officially you're not allowed to go on long cross-country flights or anything like that yet, but you're allowed to choose any flight condition yourself, whenever you want to take off. Then you're maybe in some club environment or, not even a club, but in a social media environment or something like that. Yes. Where you then see people saying, today is a great flying day, but that great flying day might be great because it's a thermally strong day with a strong gradient and a very high base, which then also means strong valley wind in the Alps or strong turbulence in the lowlands as well.
But people don't see that because they don't have the experience yet, and they still only see the message from their surroundings that it's a good flying day. Yeah, exactly. How could one start thinking more nuanced in such a scene, so that even people who might not be that experienced are better guided or instructed or something?
Do you see any possibilities there? Well, I think it's very difficult because, I believe, it's a very strong personality question as to who reacts to such "warnings" and who doesn't. I think we have to distinguish between two things. First, the pilot has the knowledge that they know—in your weather situation, let's say as an example a northeast position—they might have already heard that there's maybe a bit of gusty wind involved, but how far can I assess that? So, strong thermals are reported, the day looks good in the weather app, but whether I'm up to it now is a different decision entirely. So, first, the knowledge is there—that I know what to expect—that's the first point. And the second point: do I have the skill to fly in such conditions, so the keyword "active flying."
And then there's the third point, which I think is the hardest: bringing all these things together.
We call that situational awareness—the operational picture—where I can assess where I am now, where I'll be in half an hour, and which factors are influencing this flight, how or if they are. And of course, you need a certain amount of self-criticism. Self-reflection, as well as an honest approach to yourself: can I go fly as a pilot today? Are the conditions such that I can and will go, just because Fritz, Franz, and Lisa decided to and I'm just tagging along? And I think that's already a very difficult point, but like, I notice it with myself often—or when you read the DAV weather report, it often says in the summer that conditions can be marginal only for experienced pilots, and stuff like that. I take that very seriously. Yes. Yes. And then I'll think about it one time or another, hm, yeah, okay, maybe I won't go, even if that might not have been written for my level of experience.
Someone else might skim over that and go anyway, saying, "Kiss it, it's always fine." Yeah, and in that sense, I think it's an individual decision and it's difficult to tell people what to do, because one person wants to hear it or is receptive to it because they find that information valuable, while the other says, "Well, it won't be that bad, I've flown in weather like this before." Yeah. So in that sense, I don't think you can give a blanket recommendation because it's too individual. That's what makes it so difficult.
Especially when you look at the weather, maybe it's something where you'd say we accept more risks, and it might also depend on how the weather develops, like the basic weather character. I do think you can say now that climate change is showing up in the weather character as well, not just with higher temperatures, but also partly with new conditions that we maybe didn't have as pilots 20 years ago, or only on very rare days or in very rare years, where you'd say, "Oh, there was a very dry year in 2003 or something, or a very hot one," but after that came many that weren't like that anymore. But now we've had several years in a row, sometimes more, sometimes less, but also very, very dry years, very dry in the summer, where we have to deal with correspondingly higher thermals, but also correspondingly strong turbulence and stuff like that.
Maybe the paragliding scene isn't really tuned into that yet. What do you think?
Yeah, that could be a point, especially for those who have been flying for a long time. There have always been "hammer days," and maybe people haven't accepted that the weather has gradually changed, and a hammer day like it was in 2003 just isn't comparable to how it looks in today's weather report. Yeah, that's maybe today in the height of summer. Yeah, that's maybe today in the height of summer. I've noticed now, it's not my favorite time anymore; I actually prefer flying in the spring and autumn now because the conditions are significantly more pleasant. So my insider tip is March nowadays; I actually get the best wing conditions of the year then, there's hardly any wind, even over several days, no wind, good thermals. These high summer months are almost always somehow wind-swept, and the conditions are such that I look at the weather report and think, "Wow, is this going to be anything, or do I have to put up with this?"
Yeah, and that's maybe... That's also a point where people slowly need to rethink things. Sure, they're the longest days, and if you want to fly records, those are the days you can do it, yeah, but the conditions maybe aren't what they were 15 years ago; they've gradually become more extreme, and you obviously have to be able to handle those conditions as a pilot.
Should we provide some clarification in the scene? Basically, people say that in the past, many didn't fly at all in the winter. Now, they've slowly thawed out or unpacked their gear; the hardcore ones, of course, still flew in the winter, but many normal pilots didn't start again until March at the earliest, and their actual flying window was usually from May to September, and then it would slowly taper off—some still went to the Dolomites to catch some of September and October, and that was roughly it. But what we see nowadays is that, actually, you can fly all year round, and B, as you say, it's nice. They even fly in early spring and late summer or into autumn, and the actual summer conditions—the ones that are always called, or used to be called, the flying months—you have to say that maybe one should orient themselves a bit differently and say, you should really only go flying on the moderate summer days, but if it's significantly over 30 degrees, it's probably just so turbulent that it usually isn't that much fun, unless you actually manage to get up to 2,500 meters.
That's referring to the lowlands; in the Alps, of course, it's about 1,500 meters higher, where you might say that up there, it's maybe A, pleasant in terms of temperature, and you're out of that whole overheated layer near the ground where it gets really turbulent.
Yes, that's a good point, but I think we have to distinguish what the individual's goal is—the Sunday flyer, let's say, who does 20 flights a year. For him, it might actually be an issue, or that he avoids the midday period more than he might have done in the past, and that the morning and afternoon hours have become even more important. Those who, as mentioned, want to fly long distances will of course still want to use the long days, but even there, I think you have to be aware that the conditions on these days are bought with more risk than was probably often the case in the past. And those perfect days, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Memory always clouds things, but it feels like there were also summer days in the past with little wind and good thermals that were really nice to fly, which I've actually rarely found in recent years, so between June and August.
But that can be misleading, as I said, but it might also be a trend that's becoming apparent.
Yes, I think that has a lot to do with the increasing dryness, simply the summer dryness that we're having more and more often. Yes. Or partly already, there were years where it was incredibly dry in the spring, April, May, and there were already beastly—from my point of view, partly beastly thermal conditions at times, because you weren't expecting it at all, and where people were maybe really coming out of hibernation and then started flying thermals, and maybe expected a thermal like in the past in spring, and now they got this dry-heat thermal in the spring and it completely blew them away, and the glider accordingly too. Partly, they're saying now in terms of the weather that people say, yeah, we already have Spanish conditions, but if you look at Spain, in many regions in the flying scene it's completely standard to say that in the summer, you can only fly until 11 a.m. and at the earliest from 5 p.m., I mean, in Spain, it's still an hour further, so the day practically goes about an hour longer towards the end, the thermals also set in later, so 5 p.m. is usually still a super nice launch time and you can still fly thermals beautifully for at least three hours usually, but I have the experience very clearly that's how it is.
I've done that too, at least with us now in June and July. I live in Bonn, and there are these small flying areas in the area where you could sometimes still take off at 7 p.m. and fly thermals for an hour, and then climb again from 300 meters to 1,500 meters. I don't think that was possible before; these are simply those dry thermals conditions where so much heat can still be released late into the evening, which then rises accordingly, allowing you to still have great flights. If you're not saying, "I want to fly records and I'll leave that to the great cross-country pilots," but rather "I just want to fly nicely for myself," then it can really make sense to say, "I don't have to be at the launch site at 1 p.m. in the height of summer, I'll go at 5 p.m." It's more pleasant to hike up the mountain and it's more pleasant to fly.
I completely agree with you; I think it's just unpopular. I believe it still has to become established with us that it's okay to do something like that, but until now, if you're not flying during the peak time, you're practically a bit uncool, because it's possible and others are flying, and I think you get some weird looks if you say, "Yeah, I'm not going until 5 PM," and they're like, "Why? It's already going at 11." I think a shift in mindset is still needed, especially if you say that enjoyment or the fun of flying is my focus now and I'm only flying for two or three hours anyway, then I don't have to do it during the peak time when everything is blowing up around me, especially then. Then I can actually choose the off-peak times. Of course, if I'm speculating on ten hours or something, or even more, then that part is included, that's clear.
But it's always been like that for me, even when I was doing the really long flights, that the time between one and four was actually always the time when I was just glad it would eventually be over. It actually only got nice again towards the evening, when it got quieter and so on. That was more like the time where you say, okay, I just have to get through this now.
Yeah, I still do it every now and then, of course, and it can be fun sometimes if you catch a good day, but I find it very hard to predict whether it's going to be one of those days or not. And today, I think I'm at a point where I'd rather just say, "I'm landing now," if it's not what I expected. In the past, I think I was more of a "head against the wall" type, thinking it would get better. That's probably a process you go through.
How can we make pleasure flying cool again? Like, again. How can we make pleasure flying cool at all? Do you see any possibilities?
The question is, does pleasure flying have to be cool? Who are we trying to be cool for? That's the question. I mean, that's a social media thing, right? If I'm having fun, it doesn't have to be cool.
Yeah, but that's cool in the sense of being attractive, so that more people want to do it instead of measuring themselves against performance flying and saying, I want to do these 250 kilometers and I want to fly for ten hours. Instead, it's about really admitting that I don't have to do that at all. Rather, my enjoyment of flying—the thing that I really cherish and why I'm standing here grinning—isn't that I flew for ten hours, but ultimately maybe that last bit of thermals where I just spent another hour gliding back in gentle thermals. And that was perhaps the actual experience of this flight. And in the end, you might think, yeah, those were the 200 kilometers that were covered. But what sticks in your soul is perhaps not the number 200, but ultimately this moment of enjoyment, then maybe that last bit of thermals to gently spiral out so that the triangle is still closed.
But that feeling, the pleasant part that sticks in your head, is actually that.
Exactly, yeah. So I've thought a lot about this topic, especially over the last few months. And I always ask myself now, would I fly it the same way if no one could see me? And I think that's a great question. Because then you reflect on it much more. Am I flying now because I'm being seen on live tracking, because I want to be far ahead at XContest or somewhere else, or am I doing it for myself? And the horizon actually shifts very strongly there. I was in Norway recently for bivouac flying, and those were days where you could have flown much further. And yet, I tried it out like that, really flying only for myself, and I noticed that by at the latest...
Two or three hours in, I reached the point where I said, okay, I'm actually going to land now. Then I did it and maybe landed on foot, jumped into the lake or whatever. And those were such great flights because, as I said, I was only oriented toward myself, not toward some story or what others might expect or that I had to do something amazing. And in the end, we're actually flying for ourselves and not for Instagram. Instagram and Facebook and XContest. And I think you just have to ask yourself that more often. Am I flying for myself, or what would I do if no one saw me? I really think that helps you progress. Are you slowly getting old? Yeah, probably.
It
is the question of whether you can teach this wisdom to the young wild ones yet, or if they just still... No, that doesn't work. We were the same way. They have to butt heads accordingly and make their own experiences. One point I also want to mention is the development. The development of the material, meaning our gliders, they have become significantly more powerful on one hand, but in parallel, you get the impression that they've also become more stable in some ways—not more stable in terms of the material itself, but in terms of how much turbulence they can still absorb without collapsing. Or if they do collapse, then maybe not quite as violently as older models might have done in similar situations. And they are often, in my experience, nowadays...
More pleasant to fly, in the sense that as a pilot, you used to have to fly much, much more actively and have to brake a strong forward surge of the glider much more strongly, whereas today the profiles are already autostable in parts, so you have to row significantly less, let's say, partly in turbulent conditions. But that also leads to us as pilots perhaps saying, it's not that bad. I just stay on the gas or fly. At least maybe also without acceleration, but I just keep flying because the glider simply stays stable.
So that's certainly a factor that plays into it. The people who are starting this now don't know the old gliders. For them, it probably feels normal. And yeah, I mean, cars were also driven faster at some point, or were capable of being driven faster, and people drove faster. I think that can be observed in all areas: when the material gets better, people try to push the limits... to push the boundaries, and that's certainly not a bad thing in itself. That's why we improve things, yeah.
There was once, I saw an interesting report about the tourism director of Verbier. He said that the number of avalanche fatalities in his region has actually remained constant over the last decades, even though there have been such immense developments in avalanche airbags and things like that. But he also said that nowadays, people are going into hanging terrain. They wouldn't have even looked at that hanging terrain 20 years ago, and today they're riding down there because they feel safe, thinking they have the appropriate equipment to help them. And I think that can be translated one-to-one to paragliding. Today we fly in lines that people wouldn't have dared to before, and we fly in conditions that are actually such that 20 years ago people would have said, no, never ever.
And there's also the question of how we deal with that. Well, one approach would be... to take more into account the safety that the gliders offer, and perhaps try not to consciously push the limits so far and exhaust everything that is technically possible; then you might have a benefit. But that's also very individual.
In psychology, there's an effect called the Pelzmann effect, or some people also call it risk homeostasis. It's something where, if technical progress or something makes the externally prescribed risk lower, you as a user can take on a greater risk—or rather, you're more willing to take on a greater risk because you maintain the same level of perceived risk for yourself. And that's actually what you wrote about the avalanche people, okay? They feel safer when they have an avalanche airbag on, but then they take the risk of going into steeper slopes that are more prone to avalanches or something like that. Exactly. Just like we as pilots say, my glider never collapses, so I dare to fly much more often in Föhn conditions or in the lee or some other way, because I say, that just doesn't happen.
I can still manage to get by. And the interesting thing would be to say, how do you get people there anyway, to have a real safety plus? To say, sure, I now have the better gliders for paragliding. I now have the better, lighter, more pleasant-to-fly gliders. But do you also use that in a way where I don't shift my risk, this level? Do you think there could be ways, some kind of education or something, so that people say, yes, I'm really using that?
Yes, maybe just talking about it already brings something. I mean, as I said, I actually put out this post because it eventually annoyed me so much and I wanted to talk about it. And the feedback I've received now, many of them go in that direction and many are still reaching out. And saying, yeah, you, I abstained today. I thought that was good for those reasons. I think the fact that we're already talking about it is already moving us forward. That we're aware of the issue and are thinking about it again. Is what we're doing right now safe? Or are we just doing it because we've always done it that way? And questioning ourselves more, is what we're doing good? Or why are we doing it? You notice it too, people who have finished their training, the first thing they do is buy a B-glider. Yes, so they've gained experience.
But instead of taking that extra experience with their current glider as a safety plus, they invest it directly into more performance and are basically back at the same risk level they were as beginners. Now more experience is built up, and the safety plus they've just achieved is immediately reinvested into performance. And even there, you could ask: does it have to be the next better glider right now? Or can't I also somehow use this safety plus that I've worked for through experience?
In one of the comments on your post, someone also wrote that in hang gliding, there's a lot of stuff where you always do training and are repeatedly exposed to risky situations. Not in real life, but also in a simulator or something. And you have continuing education in many areas, and because of that, this risk awareness and the process of dealing with what dangers there are, or something like that, is always served up on a silver platter, so to speak. Just like you say, it's addressed. But also in a very organized way. You're professional pilots, you get paid for it. So there's also classic safety training. And he said that in the paragliding scene, there's actually a lack of something like mandatory continuing education or any form where you say, after your training, you can't just fly around for the next 20, 30 years however you want, but it would perhaps be sensible to have things every now and then—whether it's a refresher course or whatever you want to call it—offers where you say, sit down with your own risk awareness.
mentally confront it, and as soon as you do that, you might be more prepared not to trade that extra margin of safety on the gliders for more risk for yourself. Do you think it would be a sensible approach to say, let's somehow do a mandatory continuing education or something? Yes,
That's just difficult. I'd say, it's still a hobby after all and we fly alone, and I think that's a big difference.
With tandem pilots, you could certainly discuss that, but for a normal pilot flying alone, it's ultimately a hobby—whether you're cycling, mountaineering, or kayaking, there aren't mandatory courses or tours for those either, and you can go alone there too; you don't have to show a avalanche course every two years or anything. That's the question. What category do you put the whole thing in? If you look at the PPL area in flying—the private pilots—they still have to prove their takeoffs and landings and do training flights every two years; there, it's already relatively clearly regulated. But they also have the theoretical possibility of taking someone along, and with that, they are again responsible for others, which we as solo pilots don't have in that sense. So, I don't know if mandatory is actually the right way to go.
My offers do exist, maybe not enough yet, but those who want to could do something. I think the problem is more that they just don't do it. But we don't want to force people into it. In the end, it's everyone's own decision. So I think I'd lean more towards making people more aware of how important it is to keep training. That a flight license is something like a high school diploma. You have a license, but you don't actually know anything yet, and that personal responsibility is required and you have to keep learning, otherwise you might end up hitting your face pretty hard under certain circumstances. For me, the question is...
Question of whether we might have a kind of training problem. Well, "problem" might be the wrong word, maybe. But is our training, the paragliding training—you can distinguish a bit between Germany and Switzerland and such, it's regulated slightly differently—is it perhaps too easy? Do you get a license too quickly to then be exposed to all those flight risks, like being fully exposed as we can be? Like, you're really saying that with two weeks of possible training, you're allowed to fly in any weather condition you mean to fly in, even though you have no clue at all about what might be going on out there right now. So, would our training perhaps have to be much stricter?
So for a flight license, it's certainly too lax. I see it that way too,
Well, how can I put it... the Swiss do it significantly better. Yes.
Yeah, so you could certainly put more into that, and that would definitely be the place where it would be best handled, ensuring there's a solid basis. So, when I think back to my glider training, which I did at 15, that was already 80 hours of theory lessons. We analyzed temps and all sorts of things. It went much deeper. And a paraglider, I'd say, still seems simple, but if you've done it for a few years, you realize that it's not as simple as it first appears. You're just much more exposed to meteorological factors than in an airplane. And I think there would be a lot more sense in having more theory, also in combination with practice. The topic of risk management, human factors, is in my eyes still completely underrepresented, even after the training, where we basically leave people to fend for themselves.
So if there's more, I think I'd actually start there as well. Sure, it's a money issue and all that. But it probably wouldn't be that easy there either. Yeah, I'd be best off investing there first. And opportunities,
do that later? Like after the training, I mean, how can you encourage people to maybe say, hey, go do a meteo course again, like a risk-oriented meteo training or further education or something, where topics are actually addressed and where you can reflect on things yourself again? How could you set up an offer like that?
Well, there are offers like that. Yes, I mean, you do things like that too, but I think it's always the same people who attend those. I think, fundamentally, there has to be a sense of necessity or an understanding among people that even though they have a license now, they don't actually know everything yet. And when you talk to people, the thesis is often, "Yeah, I'm flying a lot now," but they don't look at any books and theory is a bit uncool, so they'd rather fly a lot and learn that way. So, this awareness needs to be sharpened a bit—that it's not enough, that you actually have to start dealing with the material and the risks now. Maybe it's also not emphasized enough in the training—I'm not deep enough into that—but because you want to sell something, it's not always addressed that this is a dangerous sport and that it definitely has risks which you have to deal with accordingly.
Maybe we should be more open about that, even from the very beginning. Of course, that's not... not on the billboard, that's like the cigarette packs where people are shown in the final stages of death. Yeah, I don't imagine it that way, but you could still maybe make it a bit more present within a reasonable framework. Then people might recognize the necessity more, that there's still a lot to do and a lot more to learn.
Well, you've been flying for 27 years and you've also let it slip that you were probably a bit more risk-tolerant back in the day than you are today. Let me put it this way. In those 27 years, have you ever actually experienced any truly bad situations?
"Bad" is always relative, but sure, not everything went well. I mean, I never had an accident.
In that sense, I probably did some things right. I got lucky every now and then, and I think you need that too. But of course, there were situations where I said afterwards, that was just plain stupid. And those are mostly... I've thought about it again, what... what makes these situations occur? It's always the same two things. One is ignorance, when you're surprised by a situation and didn't account for it. And the second is arrogance. When you go through phases where things are going well and you unconsciously push your limits further, and that feeling of immortality kicks in, and you overstretch the boundaries, and then you reach a point where you think, oh, here we go again. Why actually? Complete nonsense. And then you take a step back again.
And you experience that every now and then, and then you just become more conservative again and have to say, it requires more respect. It's not as easy as it looks, and we make mistakes, they happen, and I have to leave room for that. And this realization, it just takes time. You can preach it to people as often as you want. You probably have to have your own experiences.
In aviation, you have to write reports for incidents—I don't know if you have to do that for every flight, but for incidents, you always have to write reports. You write down what happened there and how you reacted or something else. That helps it sink into your own brain better, because there's often this trend of journaling and stuff where it says, write things down, and then you just integrate them better into your own knowledge. Would you recommend to people, hey guys, it's best to write down what was good and what wasn't so good for every flight? Don't just keep a logbook where the mileage is listed and when the takeoff and landing times were or whatever else, but keep a logbook where you also ask yourself maybe five essential questions.
What could I do better, what should I watch out for next time, what should I definitely not do again—you can go through that every flight. And it can sometimes be very small things, like not flying so close to the others on the slope next time; everything went well, but you can rule out that risk by doing that, because then suddenly... I'd slipped up and almost crashed into their canopy and had no control at all because I didn't see this "air pocket" coming.
So I think the basic thing to do to get better is, in principle, to actually do a kind of debriefing with yourself. And I actually do that consistently after every flight. When I'm driving home, I think about what I did well today and which decision wasn't good. And then I go through the flight again mentally, chronologically, and think about where I would do it differently now and what was good. And at the beginning, it definitely helps to write something like that down. Like the three learnings from every flight. And you'll probably see that similar things keep popping up. And I think that's how you can really develop yourself and use your experiences meaningfully. And it's so nicely put: good pilots only make each mistake once.
It doesn't always work, of course, but if you learn something from it, that's definitely... a big step in the right direction.
Alright, Marcel. I'll just leave it at that. Good pilots only make every mistake once. And if you've made a mistake once, that's not a reflection on you personally, but generally. If you've made a mistake once, then let it go. Then you can say, I'm a good pilot.
That would be nice, of course. But we don't reach that because we all make too many mistakes ourselves. But we have to accept that it's part of it. And I think the important thing remains that we leave ourselves the space for it.
Space between us, where we have enough margin below. But also in our decisions, that we don't push the limits and can thus preserve the fun and avoid the negative experiences. And that's what it's actually about, that we have fun and fly happy, satisfied, and safe.
Marcel, thanks for the talk and thanks also for your Facebook post, which has sparked quite a few thoughts in the scene. And if only a few people now say, I'm setting my safety margins and my no-gos a bit more conservatively than I might have before. And even if it's only for this summer, and by next summer they've already forgotten it. But maybe with the extreme conditions we're seeing right now, that makes a lot of sense, and it might have already moved the needle quite a bit. Thanks for that too.
Exactly, I
thank you.
You can find the link to the text by Marcel Dürr, which inspired this episode, in the show notes. Did you enjoy the episode? Then subscribe to Podz-Glidz. Leave a comment and recommend the podcast to your friends. And if you want to contribute sustainably so that I can continue to entertain and inform you so well with Podz-Glidz and the associated paragliding blog Lu-Glidz, then become a supporter. You can choose the amount of your contribution completely freely. 1-2 euros per podcast episode plus 1-2 euros per reading month on Lu-Glidz certainly won't hurt. Give it to me as a freelance journalist. But in total, it provides a stable foundation to keep these projects going. All the necessary information on how your contribution reaches me can be found in the Lu-Glidz blog on the Support page.
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