This is terrible news! IGC needs to do something about safety at WGC and GP events, as well as at all other gliding contests!

For starters, IGC must establish a portal where reports and analyses of all accidents and incidents in all IGC sanctioned competitions will be posted, including the IGC files and including any corrective actions taken. The culture of sweeping the accidents and incidents under the carpet so that the organizers can claim that they had a successful competition needs to stop and that needs to happen very soon.

I have personal experience in these matters and I think that this tragic event is an opportunity to change the prevailing culture of downplaying and ignoring the dangers of our sport.

A year ago, as a Serbian team captain at WGC in Benalla I witnessed many unsafe events, including two midairs. I sat in a number of team captain's meetings and pilot's briefings where these events were discussed, but no concrete or decisive action was taken and no pilot was penalized for unsafe flying.

Back in 2014, during the last practice day before the WGC in Rayskala, Finland I myself, flying an Arcus-T, came frighteningly close to causing a major accident right at the Rayskala airfield in front of many onlookers. This accident, which I somehow managed to avoid, could have resulted in multiple injuries and/or fatalities. However, the psychological damage to the two of us inside the glider, and to the fellow glider pilots on the ground that we nearly crashed into, wasn't avoided. I reported the incident to the safety committee and submitted to them my IGC log file. I subsequently had a couple sessions with the safety committee members, in which we discussed what happened. After that, I was allowed to fly in the competition without any repercussions. The incident was never officially mentioned, let alone reviewed and analyzed.

Branko Stojkovic
XYU