As with all my content, this is my personal opinion, and I’m not an expert (in anything). Do proper and independent research.

Paragliding emergencies

Even though our sport doesn’t feel “extreme” (at least, not to us), it does come with a higher degree of risk. It’s important to do what we can to be safer in the sky, but we also need to make sure that we don’t burden ourselves, our friends, and our families with a crippling financial burden due to accidents and emergencies.

There are different phases (and costs) to consider with paragliding emergencies:

• Immediate care after an accident: first-aid
• Search and rescue (aka. medivac): getting you from the scene of the accident to an ambulance or hospital
• The actual emergency medical care in a clinic or hospital: out of pocket or via medical aid or via medical insurance
• After-care: ongoing rehabilitation, physiotherapy or trauma counselling
• Repatriation: getting you (or your remains) on a flight home
• Third-party claims; if you flew into a car or a person and they claim damages from you

I’ll discuss all these things, but for now, let’s first focus on the main needs of three types of readers here:

1. Saffas flying at home
2. Saffas flying abroad
3. Visitors flying in South Africa.

🇿🇦 South African pilots flying in SA

One: SAHPA membership

To legally paraglide in South Africa, you will need SAHPA membership. You may be subject to fines, enforcement action, or denial of insurance claims if you skip this step. You also have insurance against damage or injury to others while paragliding (like damage to their glider, a car, a farmer’s fence, or injuring a person). Note that it does not cover damage to your own gear.

Two: Medical aid membership

Medical aid membership is essential if you want to be a pilot in South Africa. With medical aid membership, you are covered you for all kinds of accidents, including paragliding accidents. If you don’t have medical aid and you are in a paragliding accident, you will have two options: get free care in a state hospital or pay out of pocket for private care (or have your family do so).

(Note that medical aid is different from medical insurance and that membership is usually restricted to South African citizens and residents.)

The following applies to medical aid plans:

• They are governed under the Medical Schemes Act
• All medical schemes, no matter your “membership level” must, by law, provide Prescribed Minimum Benefits (PMBs) to all members
• PMBs include:
  • All emergencies (including paragliding accidents)
  • A set of 271 medical conditions (including fractures, sprains, broken bones, torn ligaments)
• Medical aid schemes exist to cover all members for expenses related to medical care (whether once-off or ongoing)
• Medical aid contributions are tax deductible (if you pay income tax in South Africa)

The Medical Schemes Act (which governs medical aid) doesn’t allow discrimination on the basis of the cause of an accident, whereas the Insurance Act (which governs medical insurance) allows insurers to specify the events under which they will (and won’t) pay out.

I am unaware of any South African medical aid ever refusing to pay out for a paragliding accident. It would be unfortunate to sue them if they refused since, again: the law states that they must cover all emergencies.

A note on out-of-pocket expenses

Note that the government has set a rand-amount that medical aid schemes must pay for the various types of treatments covered under Prescribed Minimum Benefits (PMBs), and schemes are legally required to cover these costs in full when using designated service providers. Some hospitals, clinics, or healthcare providers may charge more than the government-mandated PMB rate, however. Say you need surgery and the PMB-covered rate is R50,000, but if you go to a clinic where they charge R55,000 for the procedure, you will either need to:

1. Pay the remaining R5,000 out of pocket; or
2. Go to a clinic that will offer it at the lower rate; or
3. You will need insurance (known as “gap cover”, that…covers the gap); more on that further down.

Some non-emergency after-care (such as physiotherapy or counselling) will be included in your medical aid (as a PMB), and others (such as seeing a doctor a month later to do non-emergency x-rays) might not be included in all plans. Check with your medical aid scheme.

Three: Other considerations abroad

Some countries have specific association requirements, similar to South Africa requiring all foreign pilots to be in posession of a valid SAHPA membership. Some countries require that you have third party (or other) insurance, others don’t. Some sites require that you pay launch fees, or check in before (or out after) flying. Do your homework.

🌎 Foreign pilots flying in South Africa

One: SAHPA temporary membership

Foreigners who want to paraglide (or parakite, a la moustache) in South Africa will need to get temporary SAHPA membership. You may be subject to fines, enforcement action, or denial of medical insurance claims if you skip this step. Should you be the unfortunate person flying into someone’s property (like someone’s house or car) or their person (injuring them) or their gear, you will have third party insurance. Note that it does not cover damage to your own gear.

Two: Medical insurance (that expressly covers you for paragliding in South Africa)

Medical care in South Africa is excellent. Or rather: it is excellent and world-class in (costly) private facilities. The way to access these facilities is either to pay for medical aid (if you’re South African), pay for medical insurance (if you’re a visiting foreigner), or to pay out of pocket. Failing this, you will only have access to a free South African state hospital. The waiting times, quality of care, and facilities can be terrible. You’d rather not end up there.

Note that your foreign (non-SA) private healthcare provider probably won’t cover you for emergencies in South Africa. You will have to find out from them or get insurance that expressly covers you for paragliding while over here. You might have access to other providers, but the two that I’ve used (and that I’ve confirmed covers visitors to South Africa) are:

Safety Wing

Safety Wing was started to provide medical insurance for remote workers and I’ve extensively used them. This was my preferred medical insurance for long-term stays abroad (like when I emigrated from South Africa to Mexico, for instance), but they are increasinly attractive for short-term trips. Another bonus is that you can start coverage after you’ve left South Africa (most don’t allow for this). Their Nomad insurance (now!) has an Adventure Sport add-on that expressly covers you for paragliding. Note that if you include the Adventure sport add-on you have to pay for monthly coverage (which you can terminate on the day you want coverage to stop).

Site: safetywing.com

Seven Corners

This is another excellent travel insurance provider, I especially use them for trips longer than 90 days (since most travel insurance companies don’t). They are a bit more expensive, but they offer great coverage, they have zero deductible/excess (meaning you can have no out of pocket when you make a claim), and most importantly: I’ve had to claim from them before for two different (non-paragliding) hospital visits when I lived in China and it went extremely smoothly with their communication and repayment. Note that you have to select Travel insurance and add the Extreme Activities add-on to be covered for paragliding.

Visit: sevencorners.com

Three: Wilderness Search & Rescue

I’m proud to say that South Africa has excellent and free search and rescue (especially in the Western Cape). Save their number, NOW, and use it if you or a pilot is in need of emergency retrieve (via mountaineers or helicopter). +27219370300

I will also say, that this sending a helicopter to rescue you is a very expensive thing to do, and it is paid by taxpayers in a middle-income country from municipalities with very low budgets. Please consider adding search-and-rescue insurance if you plan on doing cross-country or participate in other non-urban adventures while you’re in South Africa. Many travel insurance plans (including those by Safety Wing and Seven Corners, above) include this.

Other emergency considerations

First-aid kit

You should have one in your harness and it should include an emergency blanket. Not only does it make you visible during recovery, it is one of the few things that weigh less than 15 grams and cost less than a dollar that might just save a life by keeping you or someone else warm.

Other smart things include bandages and compression tape, 200-400 calories in energy gel packets, headache, and anti-nausea tablets. Keep it in a waterproof or zip-lock bag in your harness. The lightweight, rollable SAM splint (available in Europe and the US), is a great way to stabilise most types of broken bones. A course (or some browsing online) on how to treat serious sprains and broken bones might also be useful.

Other things, like always flying with extra water, food, warm clothes, and a charged (or solar-charged) power bank could save your skin on cross-country adventures.

Other Insurance

You might want to consider theft insurance (against your glider getting stolen), delayed baggage and sport rental insurance (if you need to rent a glider due to delayed baggage), trip interruption insurance (in case you paid for your flight and your Airbnb but can’t visit anymore). These aren’t emergencies, but it’s something to think about. Both SafetyWing and Seven Corners include (or offer) these.

Competitions and SIV

Most medical insurance (including those that expressly covers paragliding) won’t cover you when participating in competitions, or when doing certain types of training. Confirm with your provider, or contact your comp organiser for more information.

Life insurance

Life insurance is yet another insurance policy that pays out a sum of money to beneficiaries, usually your family, upon your death. There are many exclusions when life insurance won’t pay out (like suicide and most high-risk sport, like paragliding). You will need to confirm with your life insurance provider, in writing, if they will pay out during a paragliding fatality, and (probably) share the information with your family.

Medical insurance TIPS

Again, for the purposes of this article, the idea with medical insurance is that if you have an emergency (like a car or paragliding accident) where you need medical care, and you are covered for the activity/accident that got you in trouble, you’ll probably get reimbursed (after paying with your credit card or in cash) up to a certain amount, but not for ongoing care.

Things to keep in mind:

1. Fly with your credit card.
2. It is critical to have your insurance information readily available when things go wrong (in your harness, for instance, but also emailed to other responsible people) and to make sure that your co-pilots (or others who know where you are flying) can easily find it. Consider making a note on your phone (next of kin, medical insurance policy number) that you can copy and paste in a message to your flying buddies before an XC trip (or to a friend / your hotel / Airbnb host when going out solo).
3. The reason for the above is that you (or someone with your insurance information) should contact the insurance provider after you’ve had an accident. They usually have rules about which hospitals you can and can’t go to, if they will reimburse for an ambulance or not, and some won’t reimburse you for anything if they weren’t notified in advance.
4. If you are pre-paying and getting reimbursed (in the majority of cases this will be true, but some providers will directly settle with the clinic), ask for a final invoice or document with the sum of all the related costs in one document. You might see a physician and get medicine on day one, get x-rays done the next day, see a physiotherapist three days later, and so on. Sometimes, insurance companies will argue that these are considered separate incidents, thereby reducing the total amount they will reimburse you for (or charge an excess/deductible for each of the three visits). Ask the administration or doctor to write, sign, and stamp a final statement, indicating that all costs are related to the same incident, that you will claim back.
5. If you have a choice: go to the largest clinic or hospital around. This relates to the above, where everything (x-rays, CT scans, surgery, drugs, rehab) can be done and charged by one entity in one invoice.
6. Always, always, always review your travel insurance policy and confirm in writing/the policy that you are i) covered for paragliding ii) covered for the type of paragliding you’ll be doing (solo/tandem/competitions/leisure) and iii) covered for the country you’ll be visiting and obviously iv) that you are covered at all as a resident / permanent resident of your home country.
7. If you’re, say, planning on taking a one-month holiday and you know you’ll only be paragliding for three consecutive days, it might be cheaper to buy normal travel insurance for the entire trip (which should cover you for “normal”, non-paragliding accidents) with one provider and get specific insurance that covers you for paragliding just for those other days.

Mobile phone support

If you’ve landed in an area where there is mobile phone reception, you should be able to make a call, which is why you should always save the local search and rescue/emergency services on your phone (it’s 112 in South Africa). You should also have a data package on your phone to send a message on WhatsApp or similar.

If you were involved in or witnessed an emergency, you should also be able to locate your GPS coordinates on your phone. You can easily share your location in Telegram / WhatsApp with friends and the search and rescue team. Again, this will only work if there is actually mobile phone tower signal and you have data on your phone, which might not always be the case on XC adventures.

Offline maps

Download an app that shows smaller hiking trails and then download the map for the area/state/province where you’re going to fly. Google and Apple maps usually need mobile phone data (and a strong tower signal connection) and they only show larger roads, not hiking trails.

The apps below can be downloaded and used without data/a SIM card. They will display your exact GPS coordinates (in DMS or decimal format) and can give you estimates on how far you need to hike to get back to civilisation (including elevation change).

Experiment with them and download your local area maps (before you go out), available on iOS and Android. I use them all.

• Organic Maps (superb, free, and you don’t need data after you’ve downloaded the region’s map)
• AllTrails and WikiLoc (more for general hiking)

Satellite phones

Since I paraglide (and trek, camp, and trail run) in areas with limited cell phone signal, I purchased a satellite device for peace of mind. It’s an affordable way to stay in touch with my loved ones (a simple message like “Running a bit later than planned, but everything is OK”) and can make life significantly less stressful for everyone.

The main two hardware providers are SPOT and Garmin InReach. There are many different models: some with big colour screens and maps, others you can make actual phone calls on, others weigh only a few grams and you can only send and receive text/email messages.

With my Garmin InReach Mini’s $15/month subscription I can send an unlimited amount of three pre-programmed messages. My three messages are set as:

• Starting my flying for the day.
• Safely ended my flying for the day. All is fine.
• Running late, but everything is OK.

In addition to those, I can receive messages (by someone sending me an SMS or email to my Garmin number) or send messages (which I can slowly type out on the device’s up/down buttons, or pair it with my phone via Bluetooth and type it in an app). I get ten free ones per month, but if used up it only costs very little to send or receive additional text or location messages. (I can also upgrade to the unlimited message plan — currently $35/month).

You can also get weather forecasts sent from Garmin, but I found the quality to be inferior to the Windy and RASP forecasts. Rather ask a friend to SMS/email you a short forecast to your satellite phone when you’re in the middle of nowhere (or write a simple program to send your InReach/SPOT an email with the paragliding forecast for the next day).

SOS buttons & SAR

The big thing with SPOT and InReach, however, isn’t necessarily communication but emergencies. They all have an SOS button/feature that connects you to the emergency services in the country/area you’re in.

If you have an emergency, you should hit the SOS button. Period. That said, there are a few things to know:

• When you press SOS, their teams will first try to contact you (by sending a message to the device) and also a trusted contact (to find out from them if you may have accidentally pressed the button).
• Once they’ve confirmed the situation (or if can’t get a hold of you) they will contact the emergency and search and rescue (SAR) partners in that country/area
• SAR will go out, find you, and get you to a hospital if needed, no matter what coverage/plan you have
• SAR services are free in some areas and countries, but they may be very expensive in others

On your InReach profile, you can set emergency notes. Here is what mine says:

Werner is a paraglider. SOS activation could mean a spinal injury. If SOS is activated in South Africa, contact Wilderness Rescue (+27219370300) to assist with search and rescue. Werner is a member of Genesis Medical Aid South Africa (+27861436374). ID number: xxxx; Medical aid number xxx; Allergies: none.

(When I travel outside of South Africa, I include a line like “Werner has medical insurance and medevac/casevac insurance underwritten by Such-and-such (call +1555123456). Policy number: xxx Passport number: xxx)

If you’re stuck high in a tree, don’t cut your lines (if there’s a risk of falling and injuring yourself), call for rescue. If you were forced to land on a part of a mountain and you can’t safely walk out, call for rescue. If you (or your flying buddies) are injured, call for rescue.

SAR Expectation management

I spoke to people from Wilderness Rescue. They had a few more important points to add:

1. Save Wilderness Search & Rescue’s number on your phone (and give it to all your flying buddies) +27219370300
2. Save the ARCC’s number on your phone as backup (and give it to your flying buddies) +27635054164
3. Always carry an emergency blanket. This helps you keep warm and is highly visible when people are looking for you.
4. Initially, keep your glider open on the slope (this is the signal that you’re NOT OK; if you slope land and all is OK, bunch your glider so that other people know you’re not in trouble)
5. They’ll probably send an EMS or army helicopter if a normal ambulance can’t reach you directly. Helicopters create an incredible amount of wind and your glider can be life-threatening to you and to the helicopter/emergency team. Once contact has been made, bunch your glider up in your backpack, roll it in a ball and tie it down with the lines, or otherwise just get it out of the way. Other paragliders should also be grounded with their wings secured.
6. Be patient. Search and rescue usually take many hours to coordinate. Have some water, eat some of your snacks, stay warm, and take care of wounds that need immediate attention.
7. If you land on, say, the top of a building in a city, this is considered an “urban emergency”. Wilderness Rescue will still be able to help coordinate, but they’ll probably coordinate with the local ambulance. Any other mountain (including Lion’s Head and Table Mountain) or rural emergency is considered “non-urban” and applies to them.
8. Since there are a limited number of emergency helicopters in South Africa, it may take significantly longer to coordinate a rescue in poorer and less-populated provinces (like the Northwest, Limpopo, the Eastern Cape etc.), contact ARCC.
9. If you’re a witness to an accident or incident, don’t make life more difficult for them by also putting your life in danger by doing irresponsible landings. Land where it’s safe and act as the liaison between the injured person and the rescue party.

Once they get to you, the rescue team will do their thing: get to you up in the tree and safely lower you down; hike and carry you out in some places; evacuate you in the helicopter in others. They’ll generally have a medic in the search party and then get you to civilisation or an ambulance or hospital if needed (where all the rules about medical aid and medical insurance will kick in).

Third-party insurance

In addition to the topics of medical insurance, travel insurance, medical aid, and search and rescue, we need to dive a bit deeper into third-party insurance. This is insurance that will pay out when you’re involved in a paragliding incident and you cause damage to others (property or people).

Third-party insurance in South Africa

It is illegal to fly in South Africa without valid SAHPA temporary or annual membership, so you should already have this. If you don’t, you’re not allowed to fly.

By being a SAHPA member (student, temporary visitor, annual member), you get third-party liability insurance for things like flying into someone’s car and cracking the windscreen, damage to a farmer’s fence, someone else’s paraglider, or damage to government property like signs or telephone wires. Sahpa has now published full details of their liability insurance on their website: https://www.sahpa.co.za/insurance/ 👏 (Updated: Dec 2023)

Third-party insurance abroad

If you damaged someone’s property (say, by flying into their BMW) or their person (flying into someone and injuring them), you will probably be liable for the damage. It is a requirement to have third-party insurance in some countries (like South Africa, as above, and Switzerland, among others).

Individual clubs and federations may be able to help you out with country-specific insurance, but AXA third-party liability insurance is tailor-made for paragliders and covers you up to € 1.500.000 in third-party liability claims. As above, it also includes some search & rescue insurance (at only €70 – €90 per year).

Incident reporting

After landing on private property or a new field, I always go and announce myself to the landowners (like the farmer or school staff). Most of the time we are treated as a curiosity, but sometimes land owners threaten legal action. In these cases, you might want to provide them with a follow-up declaration of what happened. Here’s a sample you can fiddle with:

And then I attach this document with the basics of the flight. Note that in some cases it might be better or required to file an Incident Report with SAHPA.

In my experience, treating the landowners with respect (you did, after all, land on their property) and explaining the situation and sharing your experience with other pilots, will go a long way to maintain these relationships.

I’ve also started a “Friends and Foes” list of friendly and unfriendly landings in South Africa. You can see it on the Airspace page.

Emergency info

Lastly: I keep a small paper with all emergency information (my name, ID/passport number, nationality; medical insurance / medical aid policy and hotline; search & rescue insurance; third-party insurance; next of kin; etc.) in my glider bag.

I also have a copy of that saved in the notes app of my phone and will send an email or Whatsapp message to my flying buddies and retrieve driver with this information before I start my flying day.

In closing

You can’t eliminate (or insure against) all dangers in life; paragliding is no exception.

It is, however, a high-risk sport, and you need to decide if you accept the risk and find ways to mitigate against financial disaster.

There are many other things you can do to lessen the odds of needing emergency services, such as only flying in areas and on days that match your skill level, flying with friends, taking advanced piloting courses, not upgrading your wing too soon, and so on.

Happy (and safe) landings!