Look up when you see a bird circling in the sky.
The sun warms the ground, and the ground warms the air above it. When that air becomes warmer than the air around it, it rises. A thermal is born.
The bird finds it, turns into it and climbs.
Sometimes you'll see several birds doing the same thing, circling together without a flap. They've learned to read something that's invisible to us.
We can launch from a mountain, find that rising air, turn into it and climb with it. Sometimes there's a cloud above marking where the thermal is. Sometimes there isn't. Sometimes you find it exactly when you need it. Sometimes you don't find it at all.
Birds are the original performers. They've been doing this for millions of years. We came much later, and we're still learning from them.
Then we go looking for a thermal. We watch the birds, the clouds, the shape of the landscape, the way the air is moving. If we find one, we turn into it and climb. On a good day we circle up with the ravens over the plateau while the Alps stack up along the western horizon. From there we look for the next piece of rising air and glide towards it.
On a calm evening, we might skip the thermals altogether and take a long glide out over the forest. From up there, forests become patterns. Rivers become lines. Animals become tiny moving figures. Mountains rise through the haze. Clouds become landscapes of their own.
There are museums where people travel across the world to stand in front of a painting for a few minutes.
Up here, the exhibition is enormous, alive and changing every second.
And nobody knows what will be on display.
What this isn't
Tandem paragliding isn't an extreme sport, and we don't turn nature into an amuzement park. I'm not going to show you what the wing can do. If you want to be frightened on purpose, I'm the wrong pilot.
If a short 20-minute flight on a fixed date is what you want, that’s a good thing to want. There are pilots near Vienna who do it commercially. Ask me and I’ll send you to one.
I’m here to give you a glimpse of what paragliding can become when we let nature decide the date of the show, and the birds lead the way.
Some numbers
- Flights, last four years
- 460+
- Of those, with a passenger
- 109
- Hours in the air
- 214
- Number of countries I flew in
- 11
- Longest flight
- 6h 08m
- First flight as a tandem pilot
- June 2025
Eleven countries, including a season in the Himalayan Mountains. In May 2024 I flew a safety course over water in Italy, with a rescue boat underneath me: you put the wing into the situations every pilot hopes never to meet, on purpose, over a lake.
I flew alone for the first time in 2010; there is footage. In all the years since, the worst thing that has happened to me is a twisted ankle, landing on my own on rocky ground at the end of a long cross-country day. That is the sharp end of the sport, and it is where I go on my own time. Tandem is a different animal: a stable wing, safety over performance, and an easy field to land in.
What it costs
A tandem wing costs about €4,700. It lasts a few hundred flights, which for me is roughly five years. Then the reserve parachute, the harness, the hardware that connects the two of us, an inspection every year whether anything is wrong or not, and the insurance that covers you while you're in the air with me.
Then the ordinary part: getting to the mountain, and getting up it.
Spread across the flights I fly, €80 is what I suggest. It doesn't cover everything, and it isn't meant to.
Past that, decide for yourself. If €80 doesn't work, say a number that does. I'd rather fly you for nothing than not fly you.
IF YOU WANT TO FLY
Fill this in and I'll get back to you. It takes a few minutes. Some of the questions are odd — there's a reason behind each one, and your answers change how I plan the flight.
Before you come
No experience needed. You should be able to jog a few steps at launch, and weigh between 40 and 110 kg.
Shoes that cover the ankle, long trousers, a windproof jacket and sunglasses. Loose things stay in the car.
Plan for half a day. Most flights are about fifteen minutes in the air. Some can be hours.
Elsewhere
In 2024 I made an experimental film about flying roughly 600 km along the Himalayan Mountains. Seventy-six minutes, mostly in the air.
Watch the trailer →