“You really have to take what the weather god gives you and the day gives you.” “You can do what the weather will allow you to do,” he said. Of course, to pull off that kind of flight, the weather has to be just right.
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He wanted to go further, having mapped out a series of potential landing spots over the 20 or so miles – as the crow flies – between Deering and Concord, preparing for changes in conditions. On that particular day, Masterson had bigger plans than merely gliding to the landing zone. “I had flown there several times,” Masterson said, including twice this year prior to that day in August, and never had an issue, though he had noticed the trees around his takeoff spot and even had asked to trim them at one point to avoid clipping them with his glider.Īt its highest point, Hedgehog is at 1,300 feet of elevation with a landing zone around 700 feet. He fell an estimated 20 to 50 feet on to a rocky terrace below, landing suspended upside down in his hang glider. Then he hit a thermal, stalling his glider and sending him back into the cliff he just took off from.
Just after takeoff, his wing clipped a tree, slowing him down. “I should have walked away,” Masterson said. But looking back, he realizes the wind may have shifted. It looked like it would finally be the right time to step off the cliff for his flight. His friend Sam Washburn of Andover, Massachusetts, decided not to fly because of the conditions, but as Masterson waited for his window, the cloud cover cleared. On that day, he was with two other gliders. 9 and Masterson, a Hancock resident, was set to embark on a trip that – if the weather cooperated and things worked out just so – would have him soaring from Hedgehog Ridge in Deering all the way to Concord. What was supposed to be an afternoon of gliding through the skies like the broad-winged hawk, a bird that Masterson has fawned over for years through his work with the Harris Center for Conservation Education, turned into a 10-second ride and a horrific hang gliding accident that Masterson fully understands could have resulted in a much different outcome. The pilot still operates tandem flights and has attached an extra security cord to ensure the mishap doesn’t reoccur.Eric Masterson is thankful every day – that he is still able to walk, to still be alive. Le Matin Dimanche reports that the American is unperturbed by the event and is planning to return to Switzerland to try hang-gliding once again. FOCA stopped short of a permanent ban, saying that the pilot’s aptitude was not in question.ĭuring the Attorney General’s hearings, which took place in June but only this weekend emerged in the media, an accident report noted that the flight took place at an average speed of some 59.3km/h and at a height between 30 and 50 metres above ground should the man have fallen, the report estimated, he would have hit the earth at a speed of 113km/h.
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The sentence comes after an earlier fine of CHF800 handed down by the Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA) and the suspension of the pilot’s license for two months. The whole thing was captured on a video that went viral, clocking up some 10 million YouTube views.Īlmost a year later, the pilot, who described the event as “the shock of his life”, has been sentenced by the Swiss Attorney General’s Office to a fine of CHF1,000 ($1,028) and 120 suspended day-fines for having “disrupted public traffic through negligence”.
The October 2018 flight of an American tourist in Central Switzerland turned sour just after take-off when it turned out his harness was not properly fastened.įollowing a two-minute white-knuckle ride during which he hung on at speeds of over 60km/h, the emergency landing resulted in ‘merely’ a fractured wrist and a torn bicep ligament.
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