Testimonials:

Dear Anatoly,

I write you because I recently suffered an emergency in flight with my paraglider and had to throw my emergency parachute. It’s an Apco Mayday 16 I think, which I bought about 7 years ago from my instructor and friend Jens Tannen, in Chile. Everything went fine, the chute opened and I’m ok here writing this email (I’m glad that the chutes really work!).

About the incident, I can tell you it was a massive collapse that made the glider disappeared behind me. I was hanging from the open side so I couldn’t use my weight to compensate, and the glider started a turn, the turn became a spin, the glider was actually spinning around me and I started sinking at a very high rate. I had no control over it anymore so I decided to deploy the parachute.

For some seconds I felt like a puppet, being thrown in all directions at high speed. It was so violent that I couldn’t even move. At one moment I saw the parachute lines on my side and a moment later there was a soft pull on my shoulders and the world stopped spinning… The chute was open over my head and it took me safely down to the ground. It was windy and I fell on a slope, so I hit the ground with the upper part of my back, and hurt my neck. Nothing serious, I’m really happy that I’m ok and that the chute worked as it was supposed to. It was my first ride on a parachute.

I guess it would have opened faster should I had thrown it immediately as we are supposed to do once we have decided to deploy it, but when I saw the glider open I thought that it might recover normal flight… But no, it was worse than anything I’ve been through in 10 years of paragliding! I think my decission to throw the chute was right on the first place, only I should have done it faster. A lesson for the next time, if there’s ever a next time…

Before the incident, I was thinking that maybe my chute was already too old but it was very relieving to see it fully inflated above my head when everything happened. Thanks for that!

Thanks for all and best regards,

Claudia Riquelme
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Mayday rescue May 19, 2003 – sunny, cool Canadian Spring day.

Nice flying conditions We are used to receiving many reports of life-saving Mayday deployments in emergency situations, as there are quite a few Maydays in pilots harnesses by now. However having Mayday 18 safely bringing down 2 pilots is a rare occurrence and we felt the need to share it with you and your readers.

Chris Muller’s girlfriend, Jackie, was flying Fiesta with Silhouette harness and Mayday 18 emergency parachute. It was a crowded day and a guest Swiss pilot, unfamiliar with site rules, collided mid-air with Jackie. Both pilots lost control of their gliders and the lines became entangled. The Swiss pilot could not find the handle of his emergency chute, so when Jackie deployed her Mayday 18, both pilots descended safely riding the one Mayday 18. Neither pilot suffered injury and the incident ended happily with only a few bruises and scratches – shaken, but safe. Even more incredibly, we received reports from a number of witnesses of an incident which occurred in Oludeniz, Turkey. Two Tandem pilots, flying with passengers had a mid-air and as a result 4 people descended to safety on one Mayday emergency parachute! WOW ! ! ! ! I believe these incidents are quite unique and prove the necessity and efficiency of emergency parachutes and underline the importance of having one.

Report As Received from Vincene Muller

I ordered some lines & risers for a Fiesta XS today. They were damaged during a ‘mid-air’ and reserve deployment yesterday. the pilot was Jackie, Chris’ girlfriend. it was her first thermal flight. Jackie is bruised and sore, but ok. As she was flying with a Silhouette Airbag & Mayday 18, I thought you might like to read a report from a spectator. Bruce Busby is a hang glider pilot with a little paragliding experience. last year he tumbled his hang glider and deployed so his observations are quite accurate. My observations of Monday’s excitement From: Bruce Busby Comments Hi all what an exciting Monday!!! You Paraglider pilots really know how get a crowd on their feet. (I wasn’t flying my HG or PG yesterday so I can say that!). 1st we had a Mid Air with Jackie and a foreign pilot. Jackie got her chute out with authority while the other pilot couldn’t find his deployment handle!!! Both were uninjured. Here’s my pilot’s observation on a few situations. Before anyone thinks I’m climbing up on my soapbox… you should know: I fly Hang Gliders and Paragliders. I’m a certified HG instructor and last year I threw my reserve after tumbling my Hang Glider in Chelan Washington.

Mid-Air: In my opinion, the sky was nearly empty, that mid air should have never occurred. Jackie was thermaling and climbing and seemed crowded by the other pilot. Pilots should leave a few gliders difference in height and 30-40 seconds in horizontal space to react to an un-expected turn or a collapse/recovery. The second pilot should have turned away and rejoined Jackie after she had a few more turns to climb out. Again, only my opinion. I was not intently watching the preclude to mid-air. I was however, intently watching after the mid air. Seeing that chute deploy was a great relief. Secondly in the mid-air the second pilot reported being unable to find his reserve handle and therefore was unable to deploy. WHAT??? Couldn’t find his chute??? WHAT??? Know where your handle is with you eyes closed! Reach for it at least once in each flight, look at it before launching and while flying. He may well owe his life to the deployment of Jackie’s chute. Had he not been tangled in her lines, he might have been very seriously hurt. Good throw Jackie! That chute came straight out! Trust me, on this. I knew where mine was and I didn’t see it before I had it out of my harness and in my hand. didn’t see it before I had it out of my harness and in my hand. I hope we all learn something from this. I hope the pilots contribute to this discussion so we can learn even more about what they experienced. Best of luck this week to all pilots, fly safe and have fun. Remember your skills may be rusty but the thermals this time of year are ripping. As one of my fellow Hang Gliding competitors said last week, Launching is optional, Landing is Mandatory.

Bruce Muller Windsports Ltd Box 2018 Cochrane, AB T4C 1B8 Canada

ph: (403) 932-6760 fax (403) 851-0737 email: fly@mullerwindsports.com website: http://www.mullerwindsports.com

We did have another report of a similar incident 9 years ago when a mid-air accident in South Africa ended up with 2 pilots riding a single Mayday to safety, escaping any injury on landing. back to top back to letters from saved pilots.
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Dear APCO,

I pulled my 9 year old Mayday 16 in anger last month over Lake Annecy France, in a spin aboard Advance Sigma4.

I’ve never deployed before, but it did the business perfectly.

Many Thanks,

Dan Ashworth
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From: Justin Kyllo
To: apco
Sent: 01 October, 2000 07:56
Subject: Reserve deployment

I just wanted to thank APCO aviation for the excellent design of the mayday reserve. This summer while flying in Golden BC Canada, I had gotten into a situation where my glider went into a spin after I flew low over some cliffs near the top of Mt.7. There was no time to sort out the glider, so I threw my reserve for the first time in a real life situation. I did not land in any trees but in a clearing. I landed completley unscathed with not even a scratch. The APCO mayday saved my life! It took 3and a half hours to hike down to get help, but I was soon with my wife and three children at our campground. I know that they are thankful for the performance of the mayday. I could see the tears on my wifes cheeks when she saw me after the incident( she watched it happen from a distance ). I would reccommend an APCO reserve to anyone looking to get a new one or getting into the sport. I bought mine from my instuctor Jim Reich of Fly BC airsports of Vancouver BC Canada. As I am just getting into tandem instruction I will definitley try to find a tandem reserve made by APCO.

Thank you for a great product! It saved my life.

Regards, Justin Kyllo
North Vancouver BC Canada
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From: Carlos Fernandez
To: apco
Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2004 11:59 PM
Subject: mayday

Dear Sirs

I would like to report you the use of a Mayday emergency parachute Serie 424787. It happend on June 1st. 2004 during a flight from the top of the Pichincha mountain in Quito Ecuador. The altitude was 3.800 m at 11h15 in the morning. An irregular wind was blowing from South creating a rotor of which I was aware. However I never realised its strenght and after twenty seconds in the air I started to suffer a great turbulence which provoked my wing to go out of control. I tried to recover it but the air conditions were so bad that every effort I made was useless. At that moment I had 30 meters of altitude above the ground and I made use of the emergency system. It opened quite fast and I had a few seconds left to recognise the situation and act accordingly. I landed on my back and putting aside a little neck pain I am OK and despite I am an 11 years experienced pilot I am grateful that I always use an emergency parachute.

Carlos Fernández
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From: Matthew Key
To: apco
Sent: Tuesday , July 27, 2006 8:34 AM
Subject: mayday

Dear APCO Team,

I am sending you an incident report on my reserve deployment in North Cyprus in September 2004. I have done 80 flights, 59 of these from 750mt. On the day of deployment I had been thermalling for about 20 minutes in thermals that were a bit punchy. I started to desend and tried to sratch around for more thermals though there was a bit of turbalance. I was about 100mt from the mountain slope when I felt I wasn’t in control (I didn’t realise at the time but I was in deep stall) though the glider was still inflated. I pulled my reserve but didn’t throw it correctly.
It opened instantly, my main glider was still flying and didn’t pitch forward, while my reserve inflated above.
I came to land unhurt, still able to have some control of my main wing. I thankfully landed on my feet, even though I didn’t have the height or time to retrive my wing on desent. I realise now that I over reacted, I should have tried to correct the situation, though I now know how to open a reserve.

Thank You.

Matthew Key
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From: Mustafa Senem
To: apco
Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005 10:55 AM
Subject: Reserve Deployment

Dear Sirs

Your Mayday reserve is a beautiful piece of equipment. It did everything as advertised and saved my life this weekend – THANKS!!!!!

Mustafa Senem
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From: Jeffrey Hillman
To: apco@apcoaviation.com through Carlos Rafael
Sent: Tuesday , Nov 18, 2006 15:52
Subject: Reserve deployment

Hi Carlos, Just to let you know that my purchase of a Mayday 18 earlier this year turned out to be a good idea. I flew into a dusty at the De Aar fun comp at about 70m and suffered two major assymetrics; the second one being on the side that I had weight shifted to in order to counter the first collapse and so the glider (Aspen2)then went into a very strong spiral dive. I realised in a somewhat detached fashion that I did not have the height to recover so I threw my rag. I was amazed at how quickly I felt the reassuring “jerk” and even more so at how soon I landed afterwards, fortunately out of my harness and in a good PLF
position. I suffered no injury in spite of landing on the side of a road embankment and having no time to collapse the glider. Witnesses on launch about 400m away reckon that the chute deployed sideways (because of the g force that I was experiencing) and that as it swung above me, I landed! Height of deployment was less than 50m so there is always a last chance! Do I now get a low save T-Shirt!!!!

Kind regards, Jeff

Professor Jeffrey C Hillman
School of Mechanical, Industrial & Aeronautical Engineering University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
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From: “Michèle Baptist”
To: Apco Aviation
Sent: Friday, September 05, 2008 1:03 AM
Subject: Rescue in free fall

Bonjour APCO,

Following ower conversation, to survive to this incident I had a lot of luck,
good reflexes, but mainly an efficient reserve chute Mayday 16 SLT and solid resistance from the reserve,
the harness, and my old body… I have a few more grey hairs but I’m happy to be alive!

THANK to YOU to have build this little reserve strong enough. It saved my life.

A lot a persons feel concerned and discuss without to have all the information. I decided to send back the glider to…….., the harness to……., the GPS to….. ., and the reserve to Xavier Beauvallet, and I am going to write an article describing my story, a witness for the other pilots. The goal is not to incriminate any material but encourage the pilotes to check lines and connections and to prevent other accidents because … I’m not the only one to have fine lines, not bright new, and people having walk on them.

It happened at Sederon (site: Buc) in front of pilots folding their wing at sunset. After a short restitution flight (18min), I did barely one 360 on the right (71,5km/h horizontal speed) when the lines broke on the right side, 2 lines first, then all, then all the left side… the whole thing in less than 3sec. I react as quickly as I could to find the handle before loosing my balance, fortunatally the reserve was attached to my Karabiners because the shock at the opening was enormous… the force and the noise let me think the chute was going to break (or the harness) but … it resisted the very brutal deceleration. Before the opening, I was falling at 212km/h of vertical speed, sitting down in my harness profiled by the airbag (the analogic memory flight of my Compeo indicates a max vertical speed of -58,8m/sec…, more than skydiving). … I arrived in a gully (the grande Combe) preparing myself for a really hard landing and I’m happy to have not broken a leg.

I estimate the chute opened at between 80 and 60m height, the vertical speed was higher than my former reserve (with a pull down apex)… it means it was a question of 1,2 second, to die or not. I can be happy to have only a little physical injury (heel injured, and sore back) and hope I will continue to have fun flying (it’s a big part of my life). I will certainly be very careful with the material I chose to fly with.

The reasons of the rupture on the glider are still to be analysed … as usual the accident was an accumulation of risks; an addition of different factors – fine lines of a demo Mercury, aging of the lines, deterioration from heating when I had a frontal last year or possibly from damage when somebody walked on the lines, on a stony take off, the flight before …. or other explanations yet to be explored.

The rupture started because the increasing load into a 360 (but I did a series of 360s descending 11m/sec at Chamonix 2 weeks ago, longer and stronger without rupture)…..

My very best regards

M i c h e L L L e
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From: “Surfair”
To: Apco Aviation
Sent: Saturday, March 14, 2009 11:49 AM
Subject: One more life saved by Mayday

Hello Apco Factory,

One of your Mayday 18 saved one of my customers. Two days ago, he was flying in the Pyrénées, hard conditions, on lee side, violent collapse and instant rotation with dive, at 60 m from the ground ! He throwed his rescue and landed soft and safe (all in flight 103 kg)… Nothing dramatic, just another story, thanks to the Mayday.

Fly safe,
Vincent.
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