"1971. Dave Kilbourne foot-launches and soars on ridge and thermal
lift (1 hour) at Mission Peak,
California,
US. This seems to be the first foot-launch of a flexible wing not using skis"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hang_gliding

It's been downhill ever since.

If you've got a brown treeless hill side with the wind coming up it makes
complete sense that you would try to launch a hang glider that was designed to
be towed behind a boat off of this hill side. Nothing could be more fun. You'd
even haul it up a few times while you waited your turn.

Fast forward a few decades and many things have changed, but then people are
still running off of hillsides to fly their hang gliders. While all this is
great fun, there are some continuing serious issues that make foot launching
less safe than it should be.  The fact that recently a very experienced
pilot could suffer massively from a blown launch just points out that this
method of getting in the air has issues.

First of all, foot launching a hang glider is a difficult skill to master. Just
launching the hang glider in perfect conditions requires much more skill than
that required to fly a hang glider. Aaron Swepston writes:

Poor launching skills can artificially inflate the appearance of
risk, and therefore the determination that foot launching is more dangerous than
cart launching.

I agree that launching and specifically foot launching, is one of the primary
causes of crashes and injuries. I don’t dispute that. My observation is that
it’s because pilots don’t make enough effort to be good launchers. They are
happy with adequacy and could care less about mastery. Launching is one of the
weakest skills pilots generally have. And boom, up goes the risk factor.

Matt Pruett writes:

There are just simply more variables to foot launching than cart
launch. It's less safe overall, but that doesn't mean that one can't enjoy it,
nor does it mean it's always less safe at every site or in all conditions.
There's undeniably more variability in foot launch sites than tow sites. The
cart and tow defeats some of the most common mistakes pilots will make, the
angle of attack is fixed and you are guaranteed an excess of airspeed for
launch. It's not perfect, but I do think it comes out ahead in overall safety.

Second, there is a limited amount of consistency in foot
launching. It is not ordinarily the case that you are foot launching from the
same site in similar conditions every time. The level of skill and safety
required to successfully launch time after time increases if you are flying many
different sites in many different conditions. Consistency is the basis for
safety. Doing the same correct thing every time is what counts. And being able
to teach a method that works and continually works makes for pilots who grow old
in the sport.

Third, what has happened is that many foot launch sites are more than sub
optimal. Often they are not brown rounded hillsides with a gentle sea breeze
coming in, but hacked out slots among the trees with left over logging debris
down below just waiting for a little mistake.  I've launched from a good
number of these. I've helped build some of these.

There are many other design flaws when it comes to hill-side launch design.
Where is the manual from the hang gliding organizations on how to build a proper
launch? I haven't seen it, but if you know of one, let me share it with my
readers.

Some pilots seem to think that this is part of the spirit of the sport. Pioneer
a bandito site and tell your friends about what a cool guy you are. How you
jumped from stump to stump to get off in a wicked wind blowing at 90 degrees to
the slot in the trees. It's great the first few times.

Fourth, conditions on launch aren't what they should be for a safe launch, but
you get away with it anyway. Wind conditions on hill sides are extremely
variable. It may be blowing down. Thermals may be coming through changing wind
directions. You may be counseled to only launch when thermals are coming through
(like in Chelan). But not too strong of thermals. You may need to launch only
when there is no wind coming up the hill side. The wind may be coming over the
back. If it isn't one thing, it's another.

There are many different wind conditions that must be taken into account at any
given site and they are different for each site. This does not make it simple
and easy to follow a set of rules that allow for safe launches.

Fifth, launching in high winds is a risky business. One tiny mistake and bad
things happen very rapidly. You are essentially out of control.

Sixth, I'm not arguing against foot launching. Obviously it makes sense if you
live next to brown hill sides or on bluffs over looking the ocean. Some places
have great conditions and well designed launches. The local pilots have done
everything to improve the safety of their sites. I have launched from many sites
where this can not be said.

There is no need to take this as an attack on your favorite method of getting
into the air. Rather I am questioning whether we have done enough, thought
enough, planned enough, designed enough, built enough, trained enough,
communicated enough, considered the possibilities enough to make this method of
committing aviation as safe as we really should. I'm also asking whether because
we haven't done enough to make it safe enough that we have lost a lot of
potential hang glider pilots to paragliding, and we have lost a lot of other
pilots both potential and real because they saw that the safety wasn't there
right from the first act of getting into the air.

Aerotowing is not a perfect launch method, but pointing this out is just
whataboutism. I'm talking about why there are issues with foot launching.

Finally, it takes a jerk to question the status quo that we are all sort of
comfortable with. Someone who makes us uncomfortable by asking if this is the
best that we can do.