Paraglider narrowly escapes death after mid-air collision with plane over Austrian Alps

An Austrian paraglider narrowly escaped death with “a few nasty bruises” after a plane crashed into her paragliding chute in the Alps.

The 44-year-old paraglider, called Sabrina, posted a video of the crash on Instagram. The clip reveals how the propeller of a light aircraft ripped her paragliding chute to pieces sending her spinning midair.

In the video she can be heard yelling as she begins to plummet towards the ground. After wrestling with her parachute she manages to quickly regain control by activating the back-up chute.

“The day a Cessna 172 knocks you out of the sky while you’re paragliding,” she wrote in a post on Instagram captioned “Happy Birthday to me”.

“I still actually can’t believe that I am sitting here typing this and that apart from a few nasty bruises and scrapes all over, nothing really happened,” she added.

The paraglider started her flight from Schmittenhöhe, a mountain in Austria, and was travelling to the Piesendorf area of Salzburg.

Police said the pilot was a 28-year-old man from Tyrol, in the Austrian Alps. He was on a sightseeing flight at the time of the crash and managed to land safely at the same airport after the collision.

An investigation has since been launched by the authorities.

Emergency services said the paraglider was lucky to not have suffered more serious injuries and was later flown to Zell am See Airport by police, according to local media reports.

The Salzburg police force said: “According to the pilot’s own statements, he was unable to swerve in time, which is why there was a collision with the paraglider.

“This was severely damaged by the propeller of the powered aircraft, which is why the experienced paraglider triggered the reserve parachute.

“She managed a safe emergency landing on a forest road.”

Fatal paragliding accidents are relatively rare and Ingrid Planitzer, a spokeswoman for Salzburg state police said she had “I’ve never seen an accident like this.” She explained that usually accidents do not involve a second party, the Times reported.

Paragliding is an extreme sport, which is popular in mountainous regions. People glide hundreds of metres above ground, covering long distances and reaching speeds of about 30 miles per hour.

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