Do you think you’d survive if a sightseeing plane cut your paragliding lines mid-air while you were floating thousands of feet above the mountains? I’d say your odds were incredibly bad.
Amazingly, though, this 44-year-old woman not only survived, but she suffered only cuts and bruises after a plane flew directly at her — missing her head by a few feet at most — while she was gliding over Schmittenhöhe mountain in northern Austria Saturday.
Her name is Sabrina, and she didn’t panic after the near-death experience. She fought and fought to get her emergency chute open as she spiraled toward the earth below.
The footage is amazing:
A paraglider survived after being struck mid-air by a Cessna on her birthday.
— Turbine Traveller (@Turbinetraveler) May 24, 2026
The collision completely destroyed her paraglider, but aside from a few bumps and bruises, she walked away without serious injuries.
The 44-year-old woman had taken off from Schmittenhöhe mountain in… pic.twitter.com/eF382GybKU
A paraglider survived after being struck mid-air by a Cessna on her birthday.
The collision completely destroyed her paraglider, but aside from a few bumps and bruises, she walked away without serious injuries.
The 44-year-old woman had taken off from Schmittenhöhe mountain in Zell am See, Austria, while a 28-year-old pilot was conducting a scenic flight over the Alps in a Cessna C182 when the accident occurred near the Pinzgauer Hütte.
She later posted the terrifying footage on Instagram with the caption: “Happy 2nd Birthday to me.”
📹: sab_thi
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Incredibly, Sabrina managed to land safely and even laughed after her ordeal. She posted to Instagram about her brush with almost certain death (translated from German by Google):
"The day a Cessna 172 knocks you out of the sky while you're paragliding..." the Upper Austrian woman writes on Instagram... "I still can't quite believe that I'm sitting here typing this and that, apart from a few nasty bruises and contusions all over, nothing really happened."
And indeed: No one was injured in the collision between a paraglider and a small plane on Saturday in Piesendorf (Pinzgau). According to police, the 44-year-old paraglider pilot from Upper Austria launched from the Schmittenhöhe mountain towards Piesendorf. At 1:15 p.m., while performing a minor maneuver above the Pinzgauer Hütte mountain hut, she collided with a Cessna piloted by a 28-year-old man from Tyrol. The woman was able to deploy her reserve parachute and land safely.
I’ve been parachuting a couple of times, and let me tell you, there’s a reason it can be terrifying: the initial drop can take your breath away. When you finally pull the chute, it’s actually quite peaceful — you just float in the sky, looking down on the vast earth below, feeling like you're in heaven.
That is, unless a plane barrels in out of the sky and misses your cranium by a hair’s breadth. I’m glad I've crossed off parachuting on my bucket list, because now I can say I’ve done it and don’t need to do it again. Paragliding is a bit different from parachuting, of course — instead of dropping out of an airplane, you run off a mountain or cliff and immediately (hopefully) start floating. Either way, I’ll leave it to the pros.
That was one heck of a birthday surprise for Sabrina, though. Many happy returns, and serious applause for your staying so calm in what must have been an unbelievably stressful moment.
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