Looking Back: Yên Bái Paragliding Instructor & Rescue Training 2025 at Khau Phạ
A look back at the 2025 professional training conference for paragliding instructors and rescue personnel in Yên Bái, 24–26 May 2025, bringing over 60 pilots to the Khau Phạ flying site.
From 24 to 26 May 2025, the Khau Phạ paragliding site — Lìm Thái village, Tú Lệ commune (formerly Cao Phạ commune, Mù Cang Chải district) — hosted the 2025 professional training conference for paragliding instructors and paragliding search-and-rescue personnel of Yên Bái province.
The programme was organised by the Yên Bái Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism, with Viên Nam Tourism and Sports Joint Stock Company (Mebayluon Paragliding) as the proposing company and the organisation in charge of preparations. More than 60 participants from all over Vietnam came to Khau Phạ for those three days.
A programme approved from national level down to the district
Opening of the training conference at the Khau Phạ landing field, 24 May 2025.Participants checking in at the start of the course.
This was not an in-house course. It went through every legal step required of a provincial training programme: on 8 May 2025 the Yên Bái Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism submitted a proposal to the Vietnam Sports Administration; on 13 May the Administration replied, welcoming the initiative and asking the Department to build a plan, form an organising board and a teaching team, prepare the professional conditions and ensure safety; on 16 May the Department issued the conference plan; and on 19 May it issued the decision to hold the conference and establish the organising board.
The board was chaired by Mr Nguyễn Hoàng Long, Deputy Director of the Department of Culture, Sports and Tourism; Mr Lê Duy Hà, Head of the Sports Management Division, served as standing deputy chair; and Mr Đặng Văn Mỹ, Director of Viên Nam Tourism and Sports JSC, as deputy chair. The board also included a representative of the Mù Cang Chải district Division of Culture, Science and Information, and the Chairman of the Hanoi Paragliding Association. The search-and-rescue content was taught directly by lecturers from the University of Fire Prevention and Fighting — Ministry of Public Security.
Alongside the organising board, the Department also established a teaching team for the conference: Mr Nguyễn Hoàng Long as team leader, Mr Lê Duy Hà as deputy, together with Mr Đặng Văn Mỹ and two lecturers from the University of Fire Prevention and Fighting, Mr Đỗ Hoàng Thanh and Mr Diệp Xuân Hải. The team was responsible for preparing the lesson plans and delivering the syllabus as scheduled.
What set this edition apart was the presence of international instructor Alish Thapa, a Nepali pilot who is an APPI-certified paragliding instructor, an SIV instructor and a skydiving instructor. He taught in person, covering material at professional level: advanced flying technique, recovery from abnormal in-flight situations using SIV methodology, and the professional standards expected of an international instructor.
The course was held at the paragliding landing field — the Mebayluon Clubhouse.
More than 60 pilots from all three regions
The participant list shows the reach of the programme: pilots from Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, Đà Nẵng, Quảng Ninh, Hải Phòng, Ninh Bình, Thanh Hóa, Nghệ An, Hà Tĩnh, Quảng Bình, Quảng Trị, Huế, Quảng Nam, Khánh Hòa, Đắk Lắk, Lâm Đồng, Bình Dương, Bà Rịa – Vũng Tàu, An Giang — alongside local pilots from Lìm Thái and Tà Chơ villages in Cao Phạ itself. Most registered for both tracks: instructor training, and search and rescue.
What was covered in three days
Law and management: participants were briefed on the Law on Physical Training and Sports and its amendments; Decree 36/2008/NĐ-CP on unmanned aircraft and ultralight flying vehicles with its amending Decree 79/2011/NĐ-CP; Circular 06/2018/TT-BVHTTDL on facilities, equipment and staff training for paragliding and hang gliding; and Circular 04/2019/TT-BVHTTDL listing sports that legally require a qualified instructor and those classified as adventure sports. This is the least glamorous part for a pilot and the most decisive one: to run flights legally, or to put your name to a flying site, you have to know the legal frame you are operating inside.
Instructor training to APPI standards: the teaching material was compiled by Mebayluon Paragliding following the instructor syllabus of APPI (Association of Paragliding Pilots and Instructors), the Switzerland-based international paragliding education system. Participants were introduced to the APPI progression from leisure pilot (APPI 1–5) through the professional levels — tandem pilot, assistant instructor, instructor, master instructor — along with teaching methodology for flight instructors: how to structure a session, how to analyse root causes when a student keeps hitting the same difficulty, radio guiding technique, where the instructor should stand on launch and at the landing zone, the session-planning templates and skills evaluation grids used at each stage, and safe tandem procedure.
Advanced technical content delivered in person by paragliding instructor Alish Thapa.
Instructor Alish Thapa demonstrating the tandem flight procedure.
The flying module covered core techniques, the factors affecting a flight, use of specialised equipment and the safety rules governing paragliding operations. Practical work covered flying skills and how to run a flying day — equipment checks, packing, laying out launch and landing areas, and group coordination.
Learning knots and rope technique for high-angle rescue.
The search-and-rescue module left the strongest impression. Participants practised knots and rope technique for high-angle rescue, along with first aid on site: splinting fractures, bandaging, and moving a casualty by stretcher. The lecturers worked with each participant individually, correcting every knot and every wrap.
In paragliding this is not decorative knowledge. A flight that goes wrong on a mountainside can put a pilot in forest, in terraced rice fields, or in a tree — situations a professional rescue team needs time to reach. The person closest to the casualty, and the one who can act correctly in the first fifteen minutes, is usually a fellow pilot.
Splinting practice under the guidance of lecturers from the University of Fire Prevention and Fighting.
Closing: certificates, and a tighter community
Participants who completed the training received certificates at the end of the programme, but the certificate is probably not what mattered most. Over three days at Khau Phạ, more than 60 people who had only known each other through online flying groups sat at the same table, handled the same rope, bandaged one another and worked through real accident analyses together. In a sport where safety depends heavily on whether pilots are willing to speak honestly about their own mistakes, that kind of bond has a value of its own.
The course was therefore never only about transferring knowledge. It was also where pilots from across the country met, shared their skies and compared how each region flies — experience from Đà Nẵng, Nha Trang, Đắk Lắk and Quảng Bình placed side by side, alongside the international standards brought in by instructor Alish Thapa.
Participants receiving their certificates at the end of the course.
Why Mebayluon takes this on
Learning, but never without time to connect: pilots from all three regions of Vietnam.
Mebayluon Paragliding operates the Khau Phạ flying site — one of the most beautiful and best-known sites in Vietnam, set among the terraced rice fields of Mù Cang Chải. For us, preparing the conditions to host a provincial training programme is not a marketing exercise; it is part of the core job: raising the standard of how a commercial flying site is run in Vietnam.
Pilots who are properly certified, who know the law, know first aid and know how to run a flying day by the book — that is the foundation on which Vietnamese paragliding grows sustainably, rather than growing fast and paying for it later.
And that is why the value of a training course does not stop at 60 certificates. When professional knowledge spreads, the flying community runs to a higher standard, and every pilot goes home to their own site carrying a shared benchmark — that is what lasts longest.
(This article looks back at an event held in May 2025.)
Participants completing their written assignment after three days of training.
An outdoor practical session at the Khau Phạ landing field.
