A paraglider was left dangling high above the ground after becoming tangled in cable car wires in a heart-stopping incident in the mountainous area of Wasserauen, canton of Appenzell Inner Rhodes, Switzerland. The drama unfolded on Sunday, June 21, when the pilot strayed too close to a local aerial cable car line.
Incident Details
The paraglider's fabric wing and suspension lines became heavily snagged on the steel cables of the lift system, leaving the man hanging mid-air with his kit wrapped around the wires. The incident immediately triggered an automatic emergency stop on the cable car system, halting passenger cabins in mid-air as a safety measure. The shutdown was designed to prevent a catastrophic accident, including the risk of the glider being ripped free or causing damage to the cable infrastructure.
Swiss outlet 20 Minuten, which published footage and details of the rescue, reported that emergency services and specialist teams were scrambled to the scene to bring the pilot down safely. Local police and Swiss media have not publicly identified the man, and neither his name nor his age has been released. It is understood he was flying solo.
Rescue Operation
Rescue teams and technical staff carried out a delicate operation to reach him while he remained suspended. Using specialist Alpine and technical rescue equipment, they secured the pilot, worked to untangle the lines and canopy from the cable car wires, and carefully lowered him to safety. Remarkably, despite the terrifying situation and the height involved, the paraglider was rescued without any injuries. He did not require hospital treatment, according to reports.
After the man was brought down, the cable car line remained temporarily out of action while technicians inspected the wires and system for any structural damage before restarting operations and allowing passenger cabins to move again.
Paragliding Safety Statistics
Paragliding is widely viewed as an extreme sport with a moderate-to-high risk profile. Safety researchers generally class it as statistically more dangerous than everyday activities such as driving or commercial aviation, but less hazardous than the most high-risk pursuits like base jumping or cave diving. Catastrophic accidents are relatively rare overall, but the sport carries a non-zero risk that increases the more often and the longer a pilot flies.
Multiple aviation and sports science analyses put the worldwide fatality rate at roughly 0.46 to 1.4 deaths per 100,000 flights. Separate figures cited by the British Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association (BHPA) suggest an active pilot logging around 40 hours of airtime a year faces about a 1 in 1,560 annual risk of a fatal or life-altering injury.
