Distractions may be to blame in deadly hang-gliding flight

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VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Her harness wasn’t attached and there were distractions that kept the pilot from following procedures. That’s the findings of a report into a deadly hang gliding incident in Agassiz this past spring.

Lenami Godinez-Avila, 27, died on April 28th after falling from a tandem-flight with an experienced hang-glider just moments after taking off.

The report by the Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association of Canada found her harness wasn’t attached, and that a crucial pre-flight ‘hang-check’ safety measure was not done.

“The glider and the harness were in fact intact, therefore the only way that the passenger could have been separated from the glider would have been that the passenger was not actually attached to the glider,” explains the Association’s Bruce Busby.

He says pilot Jon Orders may have been distracted.

“It appears that way. It was [Orders] 50th birthday, his daughter was on launch. There were a lot of people on launch and the boyfriend was set to go right after them. Who knows…what stacked up to make the situation as bad as it ended up to be,” Busby adds.

Orders is still before the courts, charged with obstructing justice after he allegedly swallowed a memory card containing pictures of the flight.

His trial is expected to begin April 15, 2013.

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