The 2015 certification launch: the pressure to go, first hand

Background: a deadline #

The 2015 World Hang Gliding Championships, held every two years, were set to begin in three and a half weeks. The rules required every glider to be certified to the industry consensus airworthiness standards. Wills Wing was under significant pressure to finish certifying its latest competition model so its pilots could compete with the best performance advantage.

One step remained: a flight to get onboard video demonstrating longitudinal stability. That documentation requires smooth air, so Mike normally flew it early in the morning or just before sunset, when the air is calm.

The conditions #

When they arrived at launch there was a light upslope breeze. But by the time the glider and cameras were set up, the flow had started to go katabatic, and the wind had turned and was lightly crossing down the slope.

He walked the glider down to launch, watching the streamers and hoping for at least a puff of upslope breeze, with the sun setting in front of him. The streamer below alternated between zero wind and 2–3 mph across the slope with a slight downslope component. It wasn’t improving.

The decision #

I decided it wasn’t going to get any better, and that I might not get another chance to get the footage in time to complete the certification before the competition. I thought about the pilots who were depending on us, on me, to get the glider certified so that it could be flown in the competition. I went for it.

Hang gliders are foot-launched, with a minimum flying speed of about 20 mph. They launch by running down a slope, so a launch without a headwind leaves very little margin. More on launching and landing downwind.

What happened #

Mike’s verdict: “Bad decision.” He wasn’t able to execute the launch, even though he had thought he would be. Mike wasn’t hurt. Other than a broken downtube and a scuff on the bottom of one wingtip, neither was the glider.

I was a lot luckier than I deserved to be. All of my judgments on that day, in that moment, were wrong, in spite of all of my experience in making those judgments.

Afterwards #

He did get another chance to get the footage, and got it, and the certification was done in time for the competition. The chance he had thought might be the last and only one wasn’t.

In his words, a combination of inappropriate overconfidence and the pressure to go. A very dangerous combination. And it came from the author of a paper on exactly this, seven weeks before he first presented it.

Questions for discussion #

1. When did you last go because you believed it was your only chance? Was it?
2. Who was depending on you, and would they have wanted you to go in those conditions?
3. What would a no-go have cost you that day, and what did you tell yourself it would cost?
4. What limit, set beforehand, would have made this a no-go without a decision in the moment?
5. Estimate the chance of a failed launch each time you go in conditions like these, with no headwind. Using the calculator, how likely is at least one failure if you make that choice ten times in a career? Fifty?

These questions also appear, with every other case’s, in the Briefing Kit.

@misc{meier2026certificationlaunch2015,
  author = {Meier, Mike},
  title  = {The 2015 Certification Launch: The Pressure to Go, First Hand},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {Edition 1.0},
  url    = {https://meiersafe.com/case-studies/certification-launch-2015/}
}