Heli BASE fatality trying to outfly terrain with Ludo Woerth and Brian Drake.

I feel the need to understand how basic errors ended in tragedy. We all make small mistakes, but rarely several in a row. In this situation a few factors such as the weather, excitement, fatigue, and the number of people flying together increased the probability of error.

[On this day, the trio was planning to fly a different line in another part of Switzerland, but were forced to cancel due to high foehn winds there (Foehn is a turbulent south-wind phenomena particular to the Alps). They moved the project to a line on a south-facing slope between Interlaken and Lauterbrunnen.]
The cascade of events begins with a bad spot. They exit the helicopter too far, and too low, to fly their intended line, even though two of the three had already flown the intended line before from a helicopter.

Perhaps due to uncertainty and the immediate realization that they cannot cross a ridgeline to access the intended line, the pace is set at an airspeed which is slower than average for the suits being flown, and at a glide which is somewhat average (possible causes: head high to find a line? Foehn wind? Pre-planned for filming?).

For the first 40 seconds of the flight, a large ridge to their left blocks access to the slope that they intended to fly. During these 40 seconds they are over relatively flat terrain, and their altitude steadily decreases as they continue at slow speed.

As the ridge slowly fades, there are few escape options besides a small pass. They turn left, hoping to find steeper terrain and an access point to the valley in which they intended to land. [At this point they are flying totally unfamiliar terrain, and only want to reach a landing zone somewhere near to that of the original plan.]

After the left turn, the trio encounters even flatter terrain. They are still flying at a low airspeed near max-glide, and therefore have no energy retained with which they could increase their glide performance. At this point they have around three seconds during which time they could in theory deploy their parachutes at an extremely low but survivable altitude. No one does. What follows is the horror of fourteen seconds of max glide, less than five meters from the ground, with basically no hope of passing the grassy fields that extend in front of them, and unable to access the steeper slope beyond.

So why did all three perish together?
One of the three, considered himself to be a specialist of close air-to-air filming, and his process was to fly just a few feet from his subject and focus on him completely, which did not allow him to see much beside the pilot he was following. He realized the severity of the situation only a few seconds before impact, too late to react. The third pilot was higher, and a little further behind, but he also was maintaining a close focus, filming the other two, and realized the situation only a moment before his two film subjects impacted, probably too late to deploy or change his flight path. He impacted just a few meters beyond the first two.

Several errors and missed decisions were necessary for them to arrive at this point, because the original bad spot did not make for a guaranteed tragedy. Many of us have made spotting errors while skydiving or BASE jumping, and in the high mountains distance and scale can be difficult to assess.

After exit, the standout mistakes are:
1. Undeniably slow airspeed, from the start. The lead pilot sets a pace that is slow, and a glide that is flat – near the max possible. This creates a total lack of potential for glide angle adjustment [they left themselves no margin].
2. The foehn wind which forced them to move locations may have been very light, but present.
3. They could have landed anywhere they wanted before making that fatal left turn into unfamiliar terrain. It was not a reluctance to land in trees that caused them to not pull earlier. [They did not want to land “out”, probably].
4. They made the left turn through the col at low altitude and without being at all familiar with the terrain, with no escape routes available as a plan B. [They hoped that it would be steep – it was not.]
5. After arriving in the col and seeing the terribly flat terrain and shitty situation ahead of them, no one deploys their parachutes. They may have been injured but probably would have lived if they had deployed in these first few seconds after the turn. No one attempts an “emergency pull” – not even in the very last seconds when it becomes clear that disaster is upon them.

As with most accidents, this was an accumulation of errors, and removing even one error from the situation could have improved the outcome. How can we minimize these errors?
There are always new answers, but here are some guidelines that I apply to any situation in which I am flying my wingsuit below a safe opening altitude. I must emphasize that any time I am flying my wingsuit near to terrain at an altitude that is unsafe to open, all of the following points become crucial. Everyone needs to recognize their own safe opening altitude, and then consider themselves to be proximity flying whenever they are below it. We are not only talking about a “mowing the lawn” type of flying.

Before Exiting:
- A physical warm-up: this is essential for performance flying, and to prepare for possible hard landings.
- Knowledge of the area: landmarks such as towns, peaks, and hazards such as power lines.
- Reconnaissance: either on foot, or by paraglider, speed-wing, airplane, etc. Carefully evaluate the landings, hazards such as power lines, and any technical flying sections.
- If exiting from an aircraft, my minimum is 500m clearance over terrain. Cost is not an issue, even at 30 EUR per minute; For a few more Euros of heli-time and altitude, Dan, Brian, and Ludo would still be here.
- Make a Plan B, and plan C! Visualize possible problems and brief each the team on possible solutions.

It is unthinkable to fly a committed line without an in-depth preliminary analysis. For the heli-drops that I did with this same team the days before, we were over-prepared. In some cases I have spent two days in front of the computer calculating glide paths, inspecting terrain using photos and google earth to identify hazards and optimize our line. Two days of ground work… not to mention the preparation for the actual flight. It is only at this price that we can calmly and confidently approach such a dangerous activity.

Our three friends were forced to change plans the morning of the jump due to the wind, and were definitely not prepared for what they encountered, or they never would have committed to flying low over terrain with a mandatory 2.9 glide. [Even a slight head-wind severely decreases l/d].

Guidelines for Flight:

- Speed! Always more speed!
- The pilot must know exactly the angle of every part of every slope he or she intends to fly over.
- You must continually evaluate the terrain in front of you, and you must be proficient at the process of calculating your glide in real time. There are well-known basic techniques to analyze your glide path (such as by aligning three points in line of sight and seeing if you are gaining or losing altitude on the target).
- Be ready to deploy immediately, at any moment. When the shit hits the fan, things almost never improve.

Any time I am flying below a safe opening altitude, whether I am low over something while in transit or proximity flying, it is mandatory that I have an immediate YES to a few simple questions:

- Do I have enough speed?
- Do I have enough glide?
- Do I have an escape route? (this could be UP, if I am flying over steep terrain)

A “maybe“, is a NO!

A NO means immediate deployment. It is always better to emergency pull, even if it means crashing without a fully open parachute, than it is to impact face first with nothing out. Impact is the reality of BASE jumping. The moment that you exit, the countdown to impact begins. We can only stop it by deploying our parachute – nothing more, nothing less. It is always better to deploy late, than never.
As Proximity Flying is becoming commonplace, the ground has begun to appear less dangerous to us. Yet it remains deadly. Our discipline is a sport which, like all sports, requires preparation. Everyone has seen athletes in other sports visualize their line: the alpine skier physically visualizes every turn of a course that he has already memorized, an acrobatic pilot puppets his hand movements for his entire routine before beginning it. And yet wingsuit pilots regularly launch themselves into a line without any of these preparations. An essential part of our warm-up should be an exact visualization of our line.

In this accident, when we add a dose of euphoria from the amazing flights in the days before, a hint of fatigue from the same previous flights, and a few stressful minor errors, we arrive at unexpected and irrational reactions, even for seasoned and experienced flyers like Dan, Brian, and Ludo. No one knows how one will react in their place, and it is pointless to imagine it. The purpose of this writing is to recognize and avoid the process of making errors in sequence.

And then there is the problem of hope. Hope that we will pass that ledge, hope that we will catch a small bubble of lifting air, hope that we’re wrong that we are about to die. It is this hope that can delay our actions in a delicate situation. Because to jump from a cliff, one must be optimistic and self-confident, and this cocktail often blinds us to the reality of a rotten situation, which only worsens with each passing second, with hope quickly running out. And maybe none of us would have done better – hence the desire to stop this type of situation as soon as possible, ideally before the jump, with a solid preparation.

This tragedy, in my opinion, was not the result of proximity flying. It highlights the complex process and the preliminary steps that are mandatory to have a scenic wingsuit flight in the mountains, of which we only see a few moments of in the videos.

Stay humble in the sky. Remember that we are only human. These three were great, and I will never forget them.

Be free and happy,

-Le Blonde (Vincent Descols)

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