A professional paraglider named Kevin Philipp had a near-death experience in 2022, and the video of him falling from the sky at break-neck speed with tangled equipment is going viral. The terrifying video shows Philipp’s glider and parachute tangled beyond what he can fix as he free falls toward the ground. Thankfully, a split second before impact, Philipp manually releases his rescue chute, saving his life.
Philipp shared clips of the first-person footage on Instagram and on YouTube. Millions have seen it and shared it. In the viral video, you first see someone else’s footage of Philipp falling from the sky with a clearly tangled chute. In the background, you hear a woman saying, “oh no, no, no” and another person muttering an expletive.
Then, the video switches to Philipp’s first-person footage. You first see clear, untangled lines at first, but suddenly, Philipp gets caught up in his glider, and the equipment’s lines become impossibly tangled.
Philipp’s training shows through as he’s able to remain calm and work through the options available to him before he hits the ground. He said in a news interview that his mother was there and watching the scene unfold, and she was the main thing on his mind as he fought to save his life.
Watch as a paraglider free falls from the sky with tangled equipment here:
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“[My] very last chance was to manually open the rescue package. Estimated time (before impact) left about 1-2 seconds,” Philipp wrote in the YouTube caption. “This was not the day to die!”
We’re so glad Philipp lived to tell this wild tale.
Header image from Philipp’s 6/10/24 Instagram post.