DEVELOPMENT AND TESTING OF A PARAGLIDNG
SYSTEM FOR PEOPLE WITH LOWER EXTREMITY DISABILITIES. The Phoenix flight chair was developed as an adaptive sport chair primarily as a paragliding system to facilitate tandem and independent flight for people with lower extremity disabilities such as spinal cord injuries, amputations, and neuromuscular disease. The Phoenix allows individuals with a wide range of disabilities and mobility to learn to paraglide. The main purpose of the Phoenix is to safely introduce individuals to the sport of paragliding and let them experience the freedom that flight brings. The development of the Phoenix was initiated by the not for profit organization, ABLE Pilot. A program developed to help individuals with lower extremity disabilities paraglide. An early ABLE Pilot publication stated that the effort “is a research and instructional program designed to establish and support the overall goal of developing and testing a formal paragliding and hang gliding instructional protocol for student pilots with various disabilities (e.g., spinal cord injuries, neurological and neuromuscular disabilities, amputations, etc.).