Sales Figures Taking Wing Again as Hang Gliders Escape Downdraft

Just a few years ago, hang gliding looked like a sport destined for historical reference only.

Sales had skidded and the powered ultralight aircraft, essentially a simplified airplane with an engine, was soaring in popularity.

“For a while it looked like we made the wrong decision staying with gliders,” said Steven Pearson, a partner in Santa Ana-based Wills Wing Inc., the nation’s largest maker of hang gliders.

But like skateboards, soft-top cars and narrow ties, hang gliders are making a comeback while interest in ultralights appears to be falling faster than a stone in still water.

Wills Wing expects to sell about 600 hang gliders this year, up from about 525 last year and 400 in 1983, when the industry was in the doldrums. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the industry was on its initial climb, Wills Wing was selling 1,000 gliders a year.

“A lot of the dealers are reporting increases,” said Amy Gray, office manager for the United States Hang Gliding Assn. Inc., the Los Angeles-based industry group and publisher of Hang Gliding magazine. The group claims 5,550 members in the United States and another 250 overseas.

More Pilots Use Parachutes

Gray attributed the increases to improved teaching techniques and a perception that hang gliding is not as dangerous as once feared.

An increased use of parachutes by glider pilots, stiffer construction guidelines and tougher instructor standards have made the sport considerably safer than it was 10 years ago, or even five, Pearson said.

Fliers in those days were people who thought of themselves as “different from normal human beings,” said Mike Meier, one of four partners in Wills Wing. With its emphasis on “personal discovery . . . hang gliding was the perfect metaphor (for the 1970s),” he said. Today’s fliers are likely to be “stabilized career people in their 30s and 40s . . . up dramatically” in age from the average flier in the 1970s.

Erik Fair, owner of Flight Systems, the county’s only retail hang-gliding shop, can equip an intermediate pilot with a used glider, harness, parachute and helmet for about $1,500. New equipment for an experienced pilot can range as high as $3,200.

Retailer Close to Factory

Flight Systems’ shop is across the parking lot from Wills Wing in an industrial area of Santa Ana. Such a location means fewer browsers but more serious customers, said Fair. And the proximity to the factory simplifies delivery. Although its primary line is Wills, Fair’s shop also sells gliders made by other companies.

As one indication of the shake-out in the industry, Wills Wing is one of about half a dozen major hang glider manufacturers left in the United States. In the industry’s heady days and subsequent plunge, an estimated 80 manufacturers were born, took wing, and died, Pearson said.

Making a hang glider today is considerably more complex than it was a decade ago.

Stronger aluminum alloys are used in the framing, and Wills and other manufacturers are striving to make the gliders easier to fly and lighter in weight. A typical glider weighs about 60 pounds and takes about 50 man-hours to make. Each craft is test flown either from mountain launching sites near Lake Elsinore or from locations in the San Bernardino Mountains before it is shipped to dealers, who then test each glider again for airworthiness. There are no legal sites for gliding in Orange County, but a few attractive “outlaw” sites, Fair said, smiling.

Wills employs about 30 workers, “most of them enthusiasts,” said Pearson, because “there’s no money in it.”

Materials Imported

Although Wills sells about 30% of its gliders overseas, principally to Europe, most of the aluminum alloy tubing and polyester sailcloth for the wings is imported from Europe.

Rocketing liability insurance premiums, increasingly the bane of every industry, have made it extremely difficult to buy the materials in the United States, Pearson said. Manufacturers fear being dragged into product liability lawsuits along with hang glider makers in the event of a mishap by a flier.

And so, where he would simply drive to Newport Beach for more cloth a few years ago, he must now contend with the administrative challenge of ordering material from overseas. And the lower dollar means the materials now cost 20% to 30% more than if they were procured domestically, he said. Material costs represent about 40% of the sales price, Pearson said.

2,000 Hours in the Air

Wills expects sales to reach about $1 million this year, off from the 1981 high of about $1.4 million but better than last year’s $875,000.

When he is not testing a new glider, Pearson is likely to be working on yet another design variation at his computer screen. Pearson reckons he has flown at least 1,000 different gliders and has racked up about 2,000 flying hours.

Despite the apparent upturn, neither Fair nor Pearson figures to become wealthy making and selling hang gliders. “We eke out a meager existence,” said Fair, immediately laughing at himself. “We’re small, but we’re making a comeback.”