Terrifying footage has captured the moment a small plane collided with a paraglider midair, shredding through the canopy and sending a woman hurtling through the sky towards the ground. The video, posted to social media by account @sab-thi, shows a woman known only as Sabrina soaring through the stunning, clean-aired skies over northern Austria. Her breathtaking views are soon interrupted, however, by a buzzing sound. A small plane then comes into frame - identified by a Cessna 172 - with the light plane swooping down and shredding through her paragliding canopy.
With her paragliding canopy torn to bits, yells and muffled cries can be heard as the 44-year-old plummeted to the ground. In the moments that followed, Sabina can be seen wrestling with a flurry of cords and limbs as she rushed to deploy the emergency reserve parachute. Sabrina can be seen racing to free her tangled legs from the harness to land safely, a move the expert paraglider managed to pull off, all the while narrowly avoiding striking a tree on her way down.
Sabrina said in a translated caption via Instagram: "Happy birthday to me," alongside Saturday's date, revealing the date of her horror fall was also her birthday. She continued: "I actually still can't believe that I'm sitting here typing this and apart from a few nasty bumps and bruises, all around nothing really happened."
The horror incident took place near Piesendorf, close to Zell am See in Austria's Pinzgau region, according to local Austrian media, citing police. Both Sabrina and the plane pilot, a 28-year-old man, escaped serious injury, police said. "The propeller of the motor plane severely damaged the paraglider, prompting the experienced paraglider to deploy her reserve parachute," police said in a statement.
As per local reports, the 44-year-old paraglider pilot from Upper Austria had launched from Schmittenhöhe, a mountain popular with paragliders, and was flying toward Piesendorf when the light plane approached and collided with her parachute. She suffered bruises and contusions but avoided serious injury, as per local reports.
Local media identifies the Cessna pilot as a 28-year-old man from Tyrol, in the west Austrian Alps. He was on a sightseeing flight at the time, and managed to safely land the aircraft at Zell am See Airport after the collision. The Cessna pilot reportedly told police that he could not avoid the paraglider before the collision. The exact cause of the accident is still under investigation, as per local authorities.
