Hang-Gliding Tourist Clings for His Life After Realizing Harness Isn’t Attached

A petrifying video shows a tourist in Switzerland clinging to a hang-glider for dear life when he realizes he is not strapped in.

Florida man Chris Gursky was on vacation in the scenic Swiss countryside last month when he and his wife decided to give hang-gliding a try. What happened next was a nightmare. Gursky’s professional pilot forgot to secure his harness to the hang-glider, and he dangled freely for two full minutes in the air.

Gursky shared the video of his experience on YouTube, and from there the story went viral. He has since spoken to CBS News about the flight, and maintained surprisingly light-hearted about it.

“When I looked down, and I saw the scenery down there, it was all the treetops changing colors and the little farm houses,” Gursky remembered, speaking to CBS This Morning‘s Manuel Bojorquez. “I actually thought to myself ‘that is beautiful, I’m going to fall to my death there.’”

Gursky had one hand on the bar of the hang-glider, while the other clung to the pilot, who was himself properly strapped in. He said that by the end of the two-minute and 14 second flight, his body was completely drained — not just from holding his own weight but from resisting the wind and turbulence of their fast flight.

“I probably had five seconds left in me,” he admitted.

The pilot tried to steer them back toward the ground, but could not cut the flight short. Ultimately, Gursky let go as soon as he felt the distance was short enough, but he still estimates that he hit the ground at about 45 miles per hour. He broke his wrist on impact, and tore a tendon in his bicep as well.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Gursky’s flight is that he does not want it to be his last. He explained in his video — and later echoed in his interviews with CBS — that he wants to go up again. This time, he intends to double-check his harness.

“I will go hang-gliding again as I did not enjoy my first flight,” he joked at the end of his video.

Speaking to CBS, he even said that he would be willing to fly again with the same pilot, whom he defended in both his interview and his own video.

“He was actually a great guy,” Gursky said of the pilot. “I felt really bad for him.”

“While the pilot made a critical error in our pre-flight setup by not attaching me to the glider, he did all he could to get me down to the ground as quickly as possible, while grabbing on to my harness and flying with one hand,” he wrote in the video.

The pilot is reportedly under investigation by the Switzerland Civil Aviation Authority. In the meantime, a hang-gliding park in Florida has offered to send Gursky up safely.