The man has an impending death experience in hang-gliding after the pilot forgot to secure his harness

SWITZERLAND: The first hang gliding experience of American Chris Gursky nearly became lethal while he was hanging on to the glider with his bare hands for more than two minutes after taking off from a flank of mountain at more than 1.2 km altitude.

The 13 October incident was Mr. Gursky's first experience with paragliding while vacationing in Interlaken, Switzerland.

Sequences from a video uploaded to YouTube showed that Mr. Gursky's safety harness had not been tied off before taking off from a cliff. The pilot was plugged in but forgot to check if Mr. Gursky was safe.

The pilot noticed the error a few seconds after takeoff and attempted to make a quick landing, while Mr. Gursky was hanging on.

"The driver grabbed my hand, but as in the movies, it was a slow slippage of the grip until my right hand slipped and I felt it. grabbing another strap on his left side for a moment, but it's slipping too, "Mr Gursky said in a Facebook post.

"I ended up holding the bar with the left hand and the lower leg with the right when we were approaching the ground." I looked down to see my feet hitting first, which m & # 39; Tore at about 45 mph (72 km / h) it was a hot landing and I was under the landing gear. "

After two minutes and 14 seconds, Mr. Gursky approached the ground enough to abandon him, while the pilot managed to land safely.

Mr. Gursky's right wrist suffered a fracture of the distal radius, which required surgery. He also tore the tendon of the left bicep after hanging on the glider for a prolonged period.

"While the pilot had made a critical mistake in our preparation before the flight by not staring at the glider, he did everything to land me as fast as possible while grabbing my harness and flying from the ground. a hand, "said Mr. Gursky.

"I'll go hang gliding again because I did not enjoy my first flight."