Wednesday 23 January 2019

Lille, France is this year's host for the 2019 Plenary welcomed all participants with an unexpected blanket of snow, which unfortunately delayed the arrival of several individuals.

Prior to the start of the Plenary, which is scheduled to start on Saturday 26th January 2019, there are two days of Open Meetings followed by a further day of Closed Committee and Working Group Meetings.

The IPC President, Gillian Rayner, introduced Patrice Giradin our host, who in turn welcomed everyone to Lille's latest Ski Station - his tounge-in-cheek reference to the amount of snow that greeted us this morning. In his role as one of the key members of FFP's bid to have Indoor Skydiving accepted into the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, he went on to detail the difficulties they have experienced with their continuing discussions with the Olympic Committee, urging all NACs to add their support to the bid via the FFP website.

Continuing with General Matters, Gill went on to invite Marcus Haggeney, the FAI Sports and Marketing Director, to take the floor to bring us up to date with the forthcoming World Air Games which will be held in Turkey in 2022.

Returning to the Agenda for Open Meetings, the Technical and Safety Committee presented their report for 2017 based on the annual NAC safety returns. Of the 85 NACs representing parachuting throughout the world, only 36 participated in sending in their returns. With only 42% of NACs participating in the survey, a comment was made from the floor that maybe the 58% who failed to submit details should be named and shamed. The Committee were applauded for their diligent and valuable work.

Technical and Safety Committee members present today Gustavo Eduardo Reyes (Chair), Jiri Blaska, István Sipos (Deputy Chair) and Liam McNulty.

The Open Meeting continued with the report of the Wingsuit Flying Committee, chaired by Dennis Werenskiold, the Danish Delegate. Other members present were Steve Hubbard, Richard 'Buzz' Bennett, Marco Pistolesi, Scott Callantine, Randy Connell and Michael Cooper. They may only have had one FCE in 2018 - 2nd FAI World Wingsuit Flying Championships, in Prostejov, Czech Republic - but fielded an impressive 63 Performance flyers from 23 NACs with some 15 Acrobatic flyers represeting 5 teams from 4 NACs.  As a result of the 2018 competitors' meeting the often-requested change by the acrobatic flyers to switch from a time-based working time to an altitude-based working time would be implemented in the 2019 Wingsuit Flying Competition Rules. It was felt that this change will facilitate longer working times and lead to significantly improved wingsuit flying.  A number of other proposals for change were on the table for discussion.

The Formation Skydiving Committee, above, was represented by Trude Sviggum, Mark Szulmayer (Chair) and David Grauwels. The remaining committee members were not in attendance at the time of Mark's report. Three FCEs took place in 2018 with the 1st European Indoor Skydiving Championships held in Voss back in April, the World Championships in Formation Skydiving and VFS held in Gold Coast Australia at the beginning of October, followed by the 3rd World Cup in Indoor Skydiving in Bahrain a couple of weeks later.  The number of competitors taking part in 2018 were similar to previous years and positive comments were received from many quarters.

Proposed rule changes to include the majority for an absolute for a 5 person judging panel in accordance with the IBD 2018/18. Possible changes to the wording of when a point can be scored when entering the tunnel and clarification of wording for which events junior competitors may enter. 

Patrick Passe presenting a suggestion to change the large formation sequential record rule. 

A representative of the French Insurance Co gave a presentation on various facets of aviation insurance which included what was and wasn't covered and how these features were fairly universal across the globe. Insurance can only be effected when the activity is legal and third party cover is mandatory. Whilst there are several areas where damages are covered, engine failure is not included. As with many types of insurance it is the value of risk which determines the cover available.

The Official Bid from Italy to host the 3rd FAI World Cup of Wingsuit Flying 2019 to encompass both Performance and Acrobatic flying, was presentated by Marco Pistolei. The location chosen is Ravenna, a cultural city in the north east of Italy being a mere 9 kms from the Adriatic coast and some 90 kms east of Bologna. Unfortunately the proposed dates were in conflict with several countries Nationals, but finally the dates chosen are to be 23 - 30 August 2019.

Slovakia's Official Bid to host the 4th FAI Indoor Skydiving Championships to be held in Tatralandia, site of Europe's largest waterpark, with the proposed dates of 6-11 April 2021.  The disciplines to be contested in Formation Skydiving will be 4-Way (Open, Female and Junior), 4-Way VFS and in Artistic Events, Solo Freestyle (Open, Junior), Dynamic 2-way (Open, Junior) and Dynamic 4-way. Nearest International Aiports being Poprad, Bratislava and Kosice.

In his role of Vice Chair of the Artistic Events Committee, Kristian Moxnes introduced his Committee to include new member Sylvia Wagner. With the completion of 3 FCEs in 2018 - 1st FAI European Indoor Skydiving Championships, hosted by Voss, Norway, 12th FAI World Artistic Events Championships, Gold Coast, Australia  and the 3rd FAI World Cup of Indoor Skydiving, Zallaq, Bahrain the respective Chief Judges reported on well run competitions with very few niggles.

Prior to the European Championships in Voss two more Dynamic Judges qualified. The shortage of AE judges in both Indoor and Outdoor disciplines continues to be a problem. With insufficient participants, the proposed Dynamic Judging Training Course in Bahrain had to be cancelled.   Due to the challenge of getting enough qualified judges for our competitions, the committee would like to propose for the Judges Committee to change the Indoor Artistic (IA) Judges Course back to what it used to be, namely to include Indoor Freestyle. We also propose that the AE Judges Course include Indoor Freestyle.

For Indoor Freestyle a questionnaire was sent out to the competitors after the competition. The result of this questionnaire was very helpful to the committee and it is their intention to use this process next year for the other disciplines.  

The Dynamic Working Group, chaired by Kristian Moxnes reiterated once again the desperate shortage of qualified judges. There is currently work being done to create an online test for judges to refresh their skills before a competition and it is their wish to find a way to implement this into the IPC in the future.  In the meantime they have identified a number of Dynamic rules which need amending to include Challenges, Patterns, Penalties and Scoring which they hope to incorporate in due course.

Michael Lovemore, Aliya Ananina (Chair), Elisabet Mikaelsson (Deputy Chair) and Arnold Hohenegger were present today as members of the Speed Skydiving Committee. Following extensive testing around the world the GPS based FlySight measuring device will be adopted as the SMD in all future Speed Skydiving events. The adoption of FlySight will necessitate quite a few changes to the current rules and these will be formulated for adoption at the Plenary.

The Committee reported on the two successful training courses held during 2018, addding three new judges to the pool.  Mike Lovemore made a presentation for the UK to hold the 4th World Cup in Speed Skydiving alongside the 3rd European Speed Skydiving Championships in Dunkerswell, Devon between 12-15 August 2019. This will be the first FCE to showcase the Flysight SMD.

Gill brought the day's proceedings to a close by addressing the subject of dealing with the submission procedure of records to the FAI.  It was evident that many people were not familiar with the requirements as laid down by the FAI, particularly in respect of completeness of the dossiers as well as the time limitations for submission. Her presentation covered every aspect relating to the correct procedures necessary to ensure future records, whether competition or performance, are correctly submitted by the appropriate personnel. As she correctly observed - We owe it to our athletes to get it right! Following the Plenary, the document Gill prepared detailing the procedure to follow for submitting records will be available for download from the Documents section of the FAI Website.