Hang Gliding and Paragliding Volume 44 / Issue 1: January 2014 | Page 22

The broken one-ton weak link.
Alain demonstrating the harness
certification testing machine.

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and every specification of the glider,
enough information is given to actually reproduce a new, identical wing.
The certification process is, then, very
specific. For a production glider to
maintain its certification, the manufacturer must produce exactly the
same glider that was submitted for
certification, down to the very materials from which it is constructed.

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HANG GLIDING & PARAGLIDING MAGAZINE

This is a crucial concept to
understand. Glider certification is
not a safety rating for the glider.
Perhaps the better word to use is the
original French, homologation, which
is really saying that the glider has
demonstrated that in a scientifically
reproducible and verifiable way, it has
been demonstrated to conform to a
certain standard. It is not actually a

statement about the safety of a glider.
Homologation is verification that
the glider will behave consistently
in a certain way under a certain set
of circumstances. It is not a statement about the performance of the
glider or how the glider may behave
in circumstances other than those of
the testing procedures. This concept
is at the heart of the next half of our
conversation.
Villenueve is the perfect place
for testing paragliders, because the
air is exceptionally calm and a tall
mountain, Sonchaux, rises 3000
feet directly above the shore of Lake
Geneva. It’s like a laboratory for testing gliders. Each glider is test flown
in basically the same calm atmospheric conditions with collapses,
spins, and stalls induced intentionally
by carefully directed pilot input.
Since he has basically flown every
paraglider design over the last 25
years, I asked Alain what he thought
about recent design trends and the
direction he sees the industry going,
especially in regard to certification of
wings.
Alain replied:
1) Certification is not a statement
about the safety of a wing. “Safety”
of a wing is a combination of the performance of a glider, the certification,
and the skill of the pilot. He noted
that most designers are in effect
“designing to the test,” i.e., making
the wing able to pass a certification
test which would suggest a high passive safety, but, in reality, producing
performance wings that require performance piloting. Alain expressed
concern that marketing is driving