Pilot swept to 8,500m in China survives

A pilot has miraculously survived being swept to more than 8,500m (27,800ft) in a storm cloud in China. In surreal video footage that has since gone viral, Peng Yujiang can be seen encased in ice flying above cloud after a cross-country flight in the Qilian Mountains went disastrously wrong.

The initial response of many pilots was to question whether the footage is real or AI generated, or a mix of both. In the opening scene of the 45-second clip Peng appears to be flying in an open harness but later on the video shows him flying a pod, leading to questions of the video’s authenticity.

(Update 30 May: In fact, it appears that the first five seconds of the clip are AI generated. In this clip here originally shared on Facebook there is an obvious AI watermark in the bottom right. The BBC among other mainstream media organisations have since edited the film down to 24 seconds to remove what they have identified as fake footage.)

In a since deleted XContest tracklog seen by Cross Country, a tracklog for Nifeng Feiyang records him flying for 33.13km in 1h 11min – with a top altitude of 8,589m (28,179ft). At first he flies east for about 15km, following the line of mountains, before the track turns abruptly 90º to the north.

The Chinese authorities have also taken the matter seriously – and grounded the pilot for six months.

“The Gansu Aviation Sports Association attached great importance to the incident after learning of it on the morning of May 25, and immediately set up a special task force,” the local federation said in a statement.

“Vice President Xue Feng served as the team leader and went to the local area with Vice President Li Qiang. With the active cooperation of Jiayuguan Sports Bureau, Sunan County Sports Center and other units, the team investigated and interviewed the parties involved.”

Peng took off from northwestern China’s Qilian Mountains on 24 May flying an Apollo 2 made by Czech manufacturer Sky. He was about 20 minutes into his flight when he lost control. “I felt the lack of oxygen. My hands were frozen outside. I kept trying to talk on the radio,” he says in the video that was posted afterwards by a friend on Douyin, China’s version of TikTok.

The report states – somewhat implausibly – that Peng was groundhandling when the incident occurred. Those familiar with the flying scene in China have suggested this may be so that Peng avoids the more serious charges of making an unauthorised cross-country flight. In China a permit is required to fly cross-country. “All the flying sites that I know have a radius of a few kilometres,” one Chinese pilot told us.

The report states: “When he was groundhandling, he suddenly encountered a strong wind and left the ground, drifting forward along the terrain … The wind gradually increased along the way and he felt that he could not land. He also encountered ‘cloudsuck’.”

‘Cloudsuck’ is the term paraglider and hang glider pilots use to describe strong, smooth, consistent and widespread lift below the base of large cumulus or cumulonimbus (storm) clouds. Cloudsuck is dangerous for paraglider pilots because it can lead to uncontrollable altitude gain inside the cloud, which is what happened in this case.

The report continues: “After Peng Yujiang felt the high-speed ascent, he immediately performed a number of altitude reduction actions such as big ears, spiral descent, B-line stall, trying to get out of the updraft, but all the operations were ineffective. After entering the cloud, Peng Yujiang could not identify the direction, and the wing collapsed several times, and he was passively lifted to an altitude of 8,589m.”

The air inside a rapidly building cumulonimbus can be extremely turbulent, which is why his paraglider would have collapsed.

The official report adds: “During the ascent, Peng Yujiang had already developed dangerous physical conditions such as confusion and short-term coma. As the temperature in the air dropped, the cold air stimulated his body to barely regain some operating consciousness, allowing him to control the paraglider and gradually land safely near Tiansheng Ranch in Qifeng Township, Sunan County, at an altitude of 1,800m.”

Peng told authorities he had no memory of flying between 7,100 and 8,500m, suggesting that he lost consciousness for several minutes due to lack of oxygen and hypothermia. The report notes that he was able to flag down a passing car and drive back to Jiayuguan City where he met his friend.

Peng’s brush with the afterlife was initially celebrated as a record by the pilot community in China. But the tone changed quickly after authorities started taking an interest. The local federation report added: “The pilot in this incident, Peng Yujiang, is a male with a paragliding class B pilot license. He started learning paragliding in 2020 and had more than two years of flying experience after obtaining the class B certificate in 2022. He usually conducts flight training at a regular paragliding base.”

His longest previous flight is 105km, according to the profile forwarded to us on XContest. The authorities have banned him from flying for six months, considered a light punishment. The friend who uploaded the video was also grounded for six months and is “required to write a report, reflecting on the negative impact of this behaviour”.

This is the second time in seven months that a pilot has survived a close encounter with a cu-nim. Last October Canadian pilot Ben Lewis narrowly escaped death after being swept to 7,374m in a storm cloud in Bir in India. After blacking out he woke “surprised” to find himself hanging in a tree, feet from the ground and still attached to his paraglider. His tracklog showed a maximum climb rate inside the storm cloud of 23m/s (80km/h / 50mph) and a later sink rate of 19m/s as he descended in the sinking air around the storm.

Official world records are not kept for uncontrolled altitude gain in a paraglider, but one of the worst cases of cloudsuck famously occurred in Australia in 2007 when German pilot Ewa Wiśnierska was swept to 9,946m. She lost consciousness for nearly 40 minutes but later regained control and landed with only minor frostbite. That incident also attracted widespread international media attention, and was made into a documentary that can be watched on YouTube.

China’s Qilian Mountains are a well known paragliding destination and in 2018 hosted China’s first Coupe Icare, a spin-off of the French free flight festival.

Cross Country has reached out to Peng Yujiang to request an interview and to confirm the details of what must have been a terrifying ordeal.