Good morning again with news from the last WGC 2012 pilots’ meeting!

The focus today was on safety and on relating yesterday’s accident. As I already posted last night, yesterday afternoon we had a mid-air collision between 2 gliders: FB – Louis Bouderlique from France and PC – Peter Hartmann from Austria, both flying ASG-29 in 15 m class. Peter bailed out off his glider and rode his parachute safe to the ground while Louis was able to fly safe back to Uvalde escorted by 2 German pilots, Susanne Schoedel (SE) and David Bauder (EI). He called his team captain immediately after getting safe to the ground describing what happened and saying that he was okay. It was a big relief to everyone to learn that we were dealing only with the need to retrieve a pilot from a remote area, and not with an emergency. Susanne and David, that witnessed the accident, reported to the airport the location of the Austrian pilot and glider and also flew together with Louis back. They proved to be extraordinary colleagues giving up flying the competition for helping a fellow pilot and reporting to the HQ. Everybody today admired their behaviour in an emergency situation.

Louis and David (left) and Susanne (right).