Felix Baumgartner's fatal accident was caused by human error, prosecutor finds
Felix Baumgartner died in July 2025 when his paraglider crashed in Italy.
Last July, Felix Baumgartner, Austrian skydiver and BASE jumper famous for jumping from the stratosphere in stunt sponsored by Red Bull in 2012, died when he crashed with his paraglider in Italy.
Baumgartner, aged 56, was a very experienced extreme athlete with many jumps and flights behind. His most famous jump was when he became the first human to break the sound barrier with his body, as he feel from a capsule 39 kilometres above Earth, falling for nine minutes.
Witnesses of the accident, which happened in Porto Sant'Elpidi, near Fermo in the Adriatic coast, said that the paraglider started spinning to the ground. It was thought that his accident was caused by a medical episode during the flight, which caused him to lose control, crashing near a swimming pool in a camp site, injuring a woman for debris flown from the paraglider.
This week, prosecutor Raffaele Iannella has confirmed that there were no technical malfunctions with the paraglider, and his accident was caused by a human error. "He fell into a spiral, and he could not get out. He was unable to do the maneuver that he should have done to exit from the fall". The prosecutor will now request that the case be closed (via AP).
