Paraglider hit by plane in mid-air, parachute destroyed, video shows frantic battle to slow death plunge with reserve chute

On the long list of things that you don’t want to happen to you while paragliding, being hit by a plane must be near the top. Well, a 44-year-old woman known only as Sabrina experienced just that over the weekend, but displayed some extremely quick thinking that thankfully saved her life.

In a video posted to Instagram, Sabrina is peacefully paragliding through the skies near Piesendorf in northern Austria when, out of nowhere, a small plane suddenly appears and slams into her chute. The impact shreds the material, severs the ropes, and sends Sabrina into a violent and disorienting spiral.

For most people, their next minute or so would be their last as the ground rises up at speed to meet them. But, thankfully, while clearly distressed and shocked, Sabrina’s training kicked in as she frantically untangles herself from the ropes and tries to deploy her reserve chute successfully.

🚨🇦🇹 Austrian Paraglider Sabrina, 44YO mother of 2, gets SLAMMED FROM BEHIND by a Cessna 172 near the Schmittenhöhe mountain.

This poor mother raking time out of her day to relax in an amazing way nearly gets KILLED and the pilot walks…

She was able to untangled herself… pic.twitter.com/NhF0NTdglb

— Steven J. Latham (@StevenJLatham1) May 24, 2026

There’s an agonizing few moments where the reserve chute hasn’t fully expanded, and Sabrina lets out panicked cries, knowing this is a true make-or-break moment. Then, miraculously, her descent slows, and she manages to land in a safe area on a trail.

I actually still can’t believe that I’m sitting here typing this

Sabrina captioned the experience “Happy Birthday to me”, indicating that this paragliding trip was a birthday gift to herself that went badly wrong. Even now, she can barely believe she survived, saying:

I actually still can’t believe that I’m sitting here typing this and apart from a few nasty bumps and bruises, all around nothing really happened.”

The Cessna pilot was later identified as a 28-year-old man from Tyrol in the western Austrian Alps who was on a sightseeing flight. Immediately after the collision, he made an emergency landing at Zell am See Airport. He claims there was no way he could have avoided Sabrina’s paraglider before the incident. Uh-huh.

This is far from the only parachuting mishap in recent times. These range from the amusing, like a woman’s experience underlining why a sports bra is very important for busty ladies who’d like to leap from a plane, to a 47-year-old who was saved from a deadly plunge when she landed on a mound of fire ants whose stings saved her life, to a very similar incident to this one where a skydiver was left dangling from the tail of a plane.

Despite these horror stories, skydiving is a relatively safe activity, so long as you know what you’re doing (or you’re firmly strapped to someone who does). But if things go wrong, they go wrong fast, and you’ll need to think as quickly as Sabrina to avoid becoming a human pancake on impact.