ICON Founder Kirk Hawkins Dies in Wing Suit Crash

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MountainDude

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I think this qualifies as an aviation accident.
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ICON Founder Kirk Hawkins Dies in Wingsuit Crash - AvBrief.com

Crash into trees occurred on the Eiger in Switzerland.
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Interesting demise…can’t imagine going that way…
 
Sad to hear. At least he passed doing something he loved. He was a great promoter of the ICON and bringing the vision to a broader audience.
 
Tarheelpilot said:
Yeah. A when not if hobby but I won’t judge. I have two motorcycles.
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Relative risk levels

Flying GA
————
Riding motorcycle
——————
Wing suit
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Tarheelpilot said:
Yeah. A when not if hobby but I won’t judge. I have two motorcycles.
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I have motorcycles, with shooting, scuba, and flying as other hobbies. I consider the first to be the only truly dangerous thing, when on the street with others. I've turned down free skydiving more than once, and always will.
 
Kenny Phillips said:
I have motorcycles, with shooting, scuba, and flying as other hobbies. I consider the first to be the only truly dangerous thing, when on the street with others. I've turned down free skydiving more than once, and always will.
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Yeah. Same.

Flew skydivers but never jumped. Not my bag. Risk management is a rather personal choice. Despite the things I won’t participate in I still take risks others refuse.
 
I've done dangerous stuff my whole adult life. Main hobbies are/were aerobatics, rock climbing, and ski mountaineering. Not to mention a career in the Army with several combat tours and plenty of parachuting, demolitions, etc.

But wingsuits are on a whole different level. Like playing Russian Roulette with yourself.
 
Kenny Phillips said:
I have motorcycles, with shooting, scuba, and flying as other hobbies. I consider the first to be the only truly dangerous thing, when on the street with others. I've turned down free skydiving more than once, and always will.
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I'm not sure that motorcycling is that much more any more dangerous than flying one of our airplanes, provided that you don't drink and ride (26% of the cyclists killed in 2023 were impaired), and do wear a good helmet. Skydiving isn't particularly more dangerous than our airplanes. I've been looking at a number of sites that have values for micromorts for different activities:

Skydiving: 8 per jumps
Hang gliding: 8 per flight
Motorcycling: 10 for a 60 mile ride
GA flying: 41 per 1000 km , so about 8 per flight hour.

Some other things:
Running a marathon: 7
Going for a swim: 12
Playing football: 20 per game
 
I thought GA flying and motorcycling (I do both) were statistically similar risks?

To me the main difference is influence of other obliviots on my health. I fly a lot more than I ride. :)
 
Ed Haywood said:
But wingsuits are on a whole different level. Like playing Russian Roulette with yourself.
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Yep. For years I was involved in mixed-gas (e.g. deep) wreck diving, generally viewed as the most dangerous recreational pursuit ever devised. Then wing suits arrived on the scene and basically said ‘hold my beer’. Far more dangerous.
 
GaryM said:
Yep. For years I was involved in mixed-gas (e.g. deep) wreck diving, generally viewed as the most dangerous recreational pursuit ever devised. Then wing suits arrived on the scene and basically said ‘hold my beer’. Far more dangerous.
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Cave diving is up there too. Every few years someone gets killed in one of the aquifer springs here in west central Florida.

OTOH with rice rockets it's like one every Saturday night in Tampa.
 
I suspect flying a wingsuit for a bit, far from Mother Earth, before popping the chute, isn’t much more dangerous than plain vanilla skydiving. But that’s not what the suit guys want to do

I think it’s not so much the suit itself that is dangerous, it’s the combination of wingsuit, GoPro, and get-paid-by-the-click influencer channels that are deadly.
 
GaryM said:
I suspect flying a wingsuit for a bit, far from Mother Earth, before popping the chute, isn’t much more dangerous than plain vanilla skydiving. But that’s not what the suit guys want to do

I think it’s not so much the suit itself that is dangerous, it’s the combination of wingsuit, GoPro, and get-paid-by-the-click influencer channels that are deadly.
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True. Wearing the suit inside a bunker is pretty safe.
 
Here's one of the more famous proximity wingsuit guys. The "hold my beer" trick was to hit some balloons on the way down.

Jeb Corliss
 
GaryM said:
For years I was involved in mixed-gas (e.g. deep) wreck diving, generally viewed as the most dangerous recreational pursuit ever devised.
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Ed Haywood said:
Cave diving is up there too. Every few years someone gets killed in one of the aquifer springs here in west central Florida.
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I'm certified full cave, though I haven't done it for a while. Personally, I'd consider OW deep wreck diving to be more dangerous, due to the risks of dangerous seas and critters, especially the deco portion. In the caves, we can just get comfortable on a nice rock or cave floor and relax during deco, whereas the wreck guys are often hanging on a deco line that's bobbing in a rough sea while watching sharks circling above.

Cave diving, like so many things, is actually fairly safe if you get the training and follow the rules. Most of the folks who die in underwater caves are untrained and make truly stupid mistakes.
 
Ed Haywood said:
I am not ...
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In the sport bike community, the word refers to riders, usually very young, who ride without protective gear and ride recklessly: excessive speed, weaving between cars, stunting on public roads, etc. They frequently manage to get themselves killed, often in gruesome crashes.

“Squid” is short for “squished kid.”
 
Warlock said:
The Book Shadow Divers for some reason haunts me to this day…and I don’t dive.
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It's gripping reading, especially when the father and son violated deco protocols and surfaced at the support boat.
 
3393RP said:
It's gripping reading, especially when the father and son violated deco protocols and surfaced at the support boat.
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That incident is a good example of why I said deep wreck diving is more dangerous than cave diving. Deco is much easier to accomplish safely in the cave environment than in the open ocean.
 
Warlock said:
The Book Shadow Divers for some reason haunts me to this day…and I don’t dive.
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I was diving a lot on the Seeker, with most of the guys who are part of the story. I wasn't yet trimix certified, and so not yet diving that deep, but I'd be on the boat diving wrecks in the 130-180' range and I'd listen to the stories from the guys who spent 7 years trying to identify what was then known as the U-Who, until Chatterton retrieved the maker plate from the electric motor room. The Germans had confirmed the U-869 as sunk off of North Africa, and until the plate was retrieved they were certain their records were accurate.

I did eventually book 8 trips to dive the U-869, but never got there. Six of the overnight trips were cancelled due to rough weather offshore (the sub is 60+ miles offshore), two were cancelled when they couldn't get enough tech divers together to run the boat. I was able to dive other wrecks at roughly the same depth--Andrea Doria, Carolina, Goulandris, Jodrey (in the St. Lawrence), but I never made it to the one that haunts me.

That's a promenade deck window from the Doria that I was able to retrieve from 230'. About 112 lbs of brass and glass, although all but one of the glass panes had blown out when she sank.

P8070011.jpgP8070240.jpg
 
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