Man hangs on for dear life after hang glider pilot forgets to strap him in

When compiling a bucket list someone is highly liking to include adrenaline filled activities such as skydiving, bungee-jumping, and shark-cage diving. But one should be careful when going hang gliding, as one man recently discovered.

A man from Florida called Chris Gursky recently went hang gliding for the first time while on holiday in Switzerland. What was meant to be a tick on his bucket list soon turned into a near-death experience.

While Gursky was thrilled to finally be able to achieve his dream of hang gliding, he soon realized that something was terribly wrong.

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An experience to remember

The experienced pilot who took him forgot to attach him to the glider, which Chris only realized when he saw his harness was loose. This was made even scarier by the fact that he was 4,000 feet in the air at the time.

He had to make a split second decision in order to stay alive. Chris recalls:

“My body weight shifted straight down and I found myself hanging on for my life.”

Gursky clung to a metal bar and the harness of the pilot while the glider headed for the ground below. The whole incident only lasted 2 minutes and 14 seconds but for Chris, it seemed much longer.

He lives to tell the tale, but Gursky was unfortunately left with some injuries; including a torn bicep and a broken wrist which had to be fastened back together with screws.

Despite the pilot’s mistake of not fastening him to the glider, Chris holds nothing against him and is grateful that the pilot did all he could to save his life.

Chris caught the whole experience on camera and the video has already had over 5 million views.

Another survivor

Chris Gursky is not the only person to survive an accident related to extreme sports. In April a 20-year-old girl called Emma Carey had a similar near-death experience while skydiving.

Carey's excitement completely diminished any nervousness she may have felt and she was ready for the experience. However, the instructor failed to pull the parachute in time causing them both to crash to the ground.

The reason he couldn’t deploy their parachute was that the cords had gotten stuck around his neck, which also made him unable to communicate with her.

Emma escaped death with a broken pelvis, sacrum, and jaw. Some of her teeth also shattered. She spent over 3 months in the hospital and after even more months of therapy is now able to walk again unassisted.

What started as a fun idea on holiday turned into months of pain. However, she maintains a positive attitude and inspires her 109,000 Instagram followers.