Swiss Authorities Drop Criminal Probe Into Death of Scottish Wingsuit Flyer Liam Byrne

Swiss prosecutors have closed their investigation into whether any crime was committed in connection with the death of a Scottish wingsuit flyer who was killed during a jump in the Alps last year, according to documents seen by BBC Scotland News.

Liam Byrne, a 24-year-old British champion in the sport, died after taking off from a height of 7,874ft (2,400m) on the Gitschen mountain in Switzerland in June 2025. He sustained fatal injuries after colliding with the mountainside.

The Swiss Federal Prosecutor's Office confirmed that proceedings had been discontinued. The decision means no individual or organisation will face criminal liability over the crash that claimed the life of the accomplished athlete from Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire.

Byrne had established himself as one of the most experienced wingsuit pilots of his generation. He had completed thousands of jumps over the course of his career, a record that placed him among the elite of a discipline that demands extraordinary precision and nerve. His profile had risen significantly after he was featured in a 2024 BBC documentary titled "The Boy Who Can Fly," which charted his remarkable trajectory from a restless child in the north-east of Scotland to a competitor at the top of an extreme sport.

Wingsuit flying, sometimes described as a form of skydiving, involves wearing a specialised suit fitted with fabric webbing between the arms, legs and torso. This design traps air and generates lift, allowing a pilot to glide horizontally through the air rather than simply fall. The sport is widely regarded as one of the most dangerous in the world, because participants frequently operate at high speeds and low altitudes, leaving very little margin for error and almost no opportunity to deploy a reserve parachute if something goes wrong.

According to the prosecutor's report, the group that jumped on the day in question included several flyers. The first two wingsuit pilots in the party landed safely and without incident. Byrne, however, struck the slope and suffered injuries that proved fatal.

The report concluded that criminal proceedings should be dropped because there was insufficient evidence to support any suspicion of a crime, including the possibility that someone had knowingly placed life in danger.

In its assessment of the circumstances, the prosecutor's office stated that the fatal crash could, with a high degree of probability, be attributed to a situation from which there was no escape. This situation arose from a combination of insufficient lift and insufficient altitude above the ground, factors that would have left the flyer with no viable route to safety.

The report also ruled out two potential explanations that could have given rise to criminal or civil liability. Investigators found no indications that the actions of any third party contributed to the crash, and they identified no pre-existing technical defect in the equipment Byrne was using at the time of the jump. On that basis, the proceedings were formally closed.

The decision brings an end to a legal process that had hung over the aftermath of a tragedy that shocked the close-knit wingsuit community and prompted an outpouring of grief in Byrne's home community on the Aberdeenshire coast.

Byrne's family issued a statement at the time of his death that paid tribute to a young man who had packed an extraordinary range of adventures into a short life. They said they wanted him to be remembered not only for the manner of his death but for the way he had lived, describing him as fearless and explaining that his courage stemmed not from an absence of fear but from a refusal to allow fear to dictate his choices. The family said he had pursued life in a way most people only dream about, and that he had soared.

They added that skydiving and base jumping meant more to Byrne than the thrill of adrenaline. For him, the statement said, the sports represented freedom and were the environment in which he felt most alive.

Byrne's fascination with flight began early. In the documentary, he recalled telling his father at around the age of 13 that he wanted to learn to fly like a bird. His appetite for adventure had already been evident for years by then. At just 12 years old, he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest peak, which rises to 19,341ft (5,895 metres). That expedition was followed by dog-sledging through the Arctic, scuba diving and a series of high summit climbs.

His progress in the air was rapid. He became a licensed paraglider at 14 and carried out his first skydive at 16. By 18, he had begun flying in a wingsuit, an item of equipment he described as a second skin that allowed him to move through the air in a controlled manner.

The closing of the Swiss investigation is unlikely to end the wider debate about risk in wingsuit flying. The discipline has attracted intense scrutiny in recent years as its popularity has grown, particularly among a generation of athletes drawn to proximity flying, in which pilots skim close to cliffs, ridges and valley walls. While advances in suit design, helmet technology and training methods have improved safety in some respects, the fundamental physics of the sport mean that a loss of lift close to terrain can quickly become unrecoverable.

For the authorities in Switzerland, where wingsuit and base jumping take place in some of the world's most spectacular mountain settings, cases such as this raise difficult questions about when an accident should be treated as a matter for the criminal courts. The test applied in this instance was whether there was evidence of criminal suspicion, such as knowingly placing life in danger, and prosecutors concluded that the threshold was not met.

The outcome means Byrne's death will be recorded as a tragic accident rather than the result of negligence, recklessness or equipment failure. It also means the family will not have the prospect of a prosecution to explain what happened on the mountain, though the prosecutor's report does offer a technical account of the final moments of the jump.

For those who followed his career, the legacy of Liam Byrne rests on the thousands of flights he completed and the boundary-pushing approach that made him a British champion. His story, from a boy on Kilimanjaro to a figure in a wingsuit above the Alps, remains a striking example of how far a determination to fly can carry a person, and of the risks that come with pursuing that ambition at the outer edge of what the human body can safely do.