Q'TAI FLY International 2.28

Flight">Q’TAI FLY – a brief history

The real beginning of Q’TAI FLY’s history was in summer 1990. With the come-together of two Tyrolean mountain sport freaks and aviation enthusiasts: Helmut Stern, a photo journalist, and Bruno Innerhofer, an electrician. Paragliding became their obsession. Almost every day they were in the mountains on the way, mostly on foot with their 20 kg backpacks. Mountaintop to mountaintop were flown with a paraglider. Other pilots joined this duo too, youngsters were motivated and started with them their flight careers.

The “Fliegerclub Wörgl/Tirol” was founded in 1991. The flight activities of this group of paragliding pilots, leaded by Helmut Stern, became professional and more and more international, also in organizational areas. In the wide-ranging program: shows, flight trainings, competitions, scout tours, pilot management, flight park founding, photo/film productions and public relations work (e.g. for the Paragliding World Cup).

In December 1995 the team started a pioneer project: in the small Tyrolean mountain village Kühtai the pilots offered tandem paragliding to the winter guests. This passenger flying program in Austria’s highest winter sport resort, located at 2020 m, could be realized with a hotel advertising association, the local tourism office and several sponsors. And in the course of this project the club became now his current name “Fliegerclub Q’TAI FLY Austria”.

After two successful winter seasons the Q’TAI FLY pilot team took on a new challenge. In the winter 1997/98 they moved to Austria’s biggest ski region, the “Wilder Kaiser - Kitzbühel”, and introduced here the tandem paragliding program. The flight base for the coming years was now in Scheffau, situated at the foot of the mountain range “Wilder Kaiser”. The story continued with many year-round innovative flight sport programs such as the “Young Kid Flying Days” (1999 and 2000). Besides numerous other activities in paragliding at home and abroad (e.g. Eurosport film production “Paragliding World Cup 1996”‚ PWC masters event “Windup 1996 Turkey”, scout tours “Lebanon 1995” / “Sri Lanka 1997” and “Albania 1998”, TV mission “Taxi Orange 2000”) during this period, the Q’TAI FLY pilots flew with tandem paraglider over 3000 passengers from the mountains, with a perfect safety record.

In summer 2000 the next step was made: Q’TAI FLY started with motorized flying activities, first in the ultralight class “Paratrike” (Powered Para Wing). After flight trainings in the USA the team began in 2001 their program in Hungary, instructing people for the UL pilot license. And for this the “Repülő Club Q’TAI FLY Hungary” was founded. Flying activities in the UL classes “Powered Fixed Wing” and “Powered Fixed Wing” are following. The next big project came up in 2005, it was the entry into gyrocopter flying (Powered Rotor Wing). This “new” airsport has become increasingly popular in Europe, especially after this ultralight aircraft class were first approved in 2004 in Germany. And the current project, a really pioneer work started in April 2013: “_wigeEAGLECOPTER” for high professional aerial footage, with a totally stable video picture for TV live production - transmitted from a gyroplane!

The Q’TAI FLY Team pilots also achieved great sporting successes with many top placings in international flight sport: at the FAI European Microlight Championships 2002, FAI World Microlight Championships 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2014. They also flew several FAI ratified Aviation World Records.

In 2015 O'TAI FLY Austria / O'TAI FLY Hungary managed 91 club members and the up-to-date overall nationality register shows members from 49 countries all over the world.