WHEN A PILOT FORGETS TO STRAP IN A ROOKIE HANG GLIDER.

GENEVA • An American tourist trying hang-gliding for the first time flew over a picturesque Swiss mountain landscape clinging to the pilot and a landing gear bar because his harness wasn’t properly attached.

A nail-biting video of the incident, showing Chris Gursky of North Port, Fla., struggling desperately to keep from falling to his death, drew more than 1.4 million views on Youtube by Tuesday, a day after it was posted.

The experience lasted more than two minutes.

“I looked down once and I thought to myself, ‘This is it, I’m going to fall to my death. I’m a goner,’” Gursky told Good Morning America.

The video zooms in on the two men, noting the passenger’s harness isn’t attached right from the start.

After takeoff from a 4,000-foot mountain ledge, Gursky dangles to the pilot’s left, clinging to the glider’s bar or the pilot himself, constantly trying to tighten his grip.

“I just locked on and held on as hard as I could,” Gursky recalled in the interview. “I didn’t have much grip left in me at all. My hand was opening, I was slipping.”

Gursky finally ejected — while travelling at an estimated 70 km/h — right before the glider landed in a grassy field, suffering a broken wrist and a torn biceps tendon.

Gursky, an auto-parts store manager and photographer, wrote he didn’t get to enjoy his first crack at hanggliding, so he planned to give it another try.

He also told Cross Country Magazine he is not angry at the pilot. “I am past that phase. He did all he could and more. He is a good guy.

“While the pilot made a critical error in our pre-flight set up by not attaching me to the glider, he did all he could to get me down to the ground as quickly as possible while grabbing onto my harness and flying with one hand.”

Spokesman Antonello Laveglia of the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation said it planned to “reconstruct the events” of the flight and would hear the pilot’s account.

In 2014, B.C. hang-glider pilot William Orders received a five-month jail sentence for criminal negligence causing death after his passenger plummeted 300 metres to her death in 2012.

Orders didn’t hook Lenami Godinez-avila to the glider. After he landed, he swallowed a memory card containing video of the incident.

GURSK3 / YOUTUBE Switzerland’s civil aviation authority said it will question a hang-glider pilot after an American tourist nearly fell to his death because his harness wasn’t properly attached. Video of the incident was posted to Youtube on Monday.