The 27-year-old woman who plummeted to her death during a guided hang gliding voyage earlier this year wasn’t connected to the apparatus prior to takeoff, according to an accident report.
The Hang Gliding and Paragliding Association of Canada launched an investigation shortly after the April 28 tragedy and found no evidence that equipment failure was to blame in the death of Lenami Godinez-Avila.
All suspension straps and connection devices were found to be in good working order, without defect, and weather conditions were also ruled out as a contributing factor.
“The passenger’s harness was not connected to the glider,” the report reads. “The failure to ensure the connection of the passenger to the glider and failure to perform a thorough pre-launch readiness assessment suggests compounding incidents of pilot error.”
The report, released Wednesday evening, suggests pilot Jon Orders may have been distracted before takeoff. He had hired an instructor to accompany a second passenger, Godinez-Avila’s boyfriend, and the two pilots appear to have shared preparation duties for the trips.
“The dynamics of multiple passengers and instructors may be the key to understanding why critical pre-launch procedures were not performed,” the report says.
The boyfriend, who purchased the gliding adventure for the couple’s two-year anniversary, watched Godinez-Avila fall to her death.
The association ultimately found Orders, as pilot-in-command, was solely responsible for the safety of his own passenger, however.
Orders was arrested two days after the accident and held in police custody on a charge that he attempted to obstruct justice by swallowing a memory card with footage of the fatal flight.
He remained in custody for another week as police waited for the card to pass through his system. He is set to stand trial in April.
The HPAC says it will follow up its report at a later date with recommendations aimed at preventing a similar accident.
