Wingsuit BASE jumping

Is wingsuit BASE jumping safe?

No. Jumping off a cliff in a wingsuit, and above all flying close to the terrain, is one of the most dangerous sports people do. We score it 24 out of 100, a little below plain BASE jumping, because wingsuits now make up most of the dead.

No one counts wingsuit BASE jumps, so a per-jump rate for wingsuits alone does not exist. The best guide is the BASE record. In the Lauterbrunnen valley in Switzerland, 39 BASE jumpers died in 2007–2016, a fatality risk of 0.02% to 0.08% per jump, or 200 to 800 micromortsMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary. At Kjerag in Norway it was about 430 micromorts per jump. Wingsuit flights probably sit at the upper end of that range.

How wingsuits took over the BASE death toll

Mei-Dan and colleagues tracked BASE deaths from 1981 to 2011. Between 2002 and 2007, wingsuits were involved in 10 of 61 deaths (16%). Between 2008 and 2011, the share rose to 29 of 59 (49%). In the first eight months of 2013, 17 of 19 BASE deaths were in wingsuits.

The trend held. Bouchat and Brymer's review of 223 BASE deaths from 2007 to 2017 counted 137 wingsuit jumps among them. By the time of the 2023 Lauterbrunnen study, the BASE Fatality List counted 100 deaths in Switzerland since 1981, 62 of them in wingsuits.

Wingsuits are common in the valley, but not that common among the people who get hurt and survive. Of 158 recorded incidents in Lauterbrunnen (injuries, deaths and rescues of unhurt jumpers), 45% involved wingsuits and 30% tracksuits, the smaller cousin of the wingsuit. A larger wingsuit share among the dead than among all incidents points to crashes that more often kill.

The 1981–2011 wingsuit deaths followed a clear pattern:

• Almost all launched from cliffs (38 of 39).
• Cliff strike or ground impact caused nearly every death, 19 and 18 cases.
• Misjudged flight path was the cause in 17. The pilot flew a line that did not clear a ridge, tree line or slope.
• 97% were men, mostly experienced jumpers.

Why proximity flying is so unforgiving

A wingsuit turns a falling body into a glider. Pilots fly at more than 250 km/h, and a good suit travels several metres forward for every metre it drops. Proximity flying means following the terrain closely, along ridges and gullies, for the thrill of seeing the ground rush past.

The trouble is that glide performance varies with air density, wind, the pilot's form on the day and small errors in body position. A line that cleared a ridge last week can fall a few metres short today. At that speed there is no time to correct and often no height left to open a parachute. Unlike a skydiver, a BASE jumper carries one parachute and no reserve.

Injuries and rescue

Crashes in a wingsuit tend to kill rather than injure, so injury figures tell only part of the story. In Lauterbrunnen, BASE jumpers were injured on 0.05% to 0.2% of jumps in 2007–2016. The patients were mostly young, experienced men: 86% of those whose record was known had made more than 50 BASE jumps.

Rescue means steep, broken ground below a cliff. In the Lauterbrunnen series, 74% of missions were flown by helicopter, often with a winch or long line.

Wingsuit skydiving is a different sport

Flying a wingsuit out of an aircraft is not the activity this page scores. It starts thousands of feet above open fields, with a reserve parachute and usually an automatic activation device. The US Parachute Association requires 200 skydives and a current licence before a first wingsuit jump, and expects a first-flight course with a coach. Its manual lists the real hazards: hitting the aircraft tail on exit, collisions with other jumpers, trouble reaching the parachute handle with the arm wings, and spins that must be fixed within 5 seconds or 1,000 feet.

No one publishes a death rate for wingsuit skydives, so we do not score them. They add some risk to a normal skydive, at about 4 micromortsMicromortA one-in-a-million chance of death. It lets you compare the risk of very different activities on one scale.More in the glossary per jump in the US, but nothing like the hundreds per jump of flying near terrain.

If you want to fly a wingsuit off a cliff

1. Start from aircraft, not cliffs. Meet the 200-jump minimum, take a first-flight course with a qualified coach and fly a beginner suit.
2. Learn BASE without a wingsuit first, on big, clean objects, through a structured course.
3. Build hundreds of wingsuit skydives before your first wingsuit BASE jump, and start on exits with a long, clear flight path away from the wall.
4. Treat proximity flying as a separate sport with a separate risk. Fly lines with large margins, and walk away when the wind or your form is off.
5. Learn exits and lines from people who know the site, and never fly a new line without a plan to clear terrain early and open high.

How we scored it

We previously scored this page 29, when it covered wingsuit flying from both cliffs and aircraft. It now covers only wingsuit BASE, so the drop zone no longer lifts the scores. Fatality risk (16) uses the BASE range and sits a little below BASE jumping because wingsuits dominate the deaths. Controllability (35) and the rescue environment (20) are lower than for BASE in general, which also includes bridges and buildings, and injury risk (35) uses the same Lauterbrunnen data. Compare hang gliding for a far gentler way to fly through mountain air.