KL Tower BASE Jump

Base jumper injured, Aussie participant entangled in tree during Kuantan tower show | New Straits Times KUANTAN: A base jump participant was injured while two others escaped unhurt after veering off course during a landing at a demonstration held in conjunction with the Kuantan 188 Festival here yesterday.

https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/category/nation/2025/04/16/govt-orders-kl-towers-temporary-closure-amid-concession-dispute

Govt orders KL Tower’s temporary closure, says MKLSB operating illegally The communications ministry says the reopening date will be announced in due course.

Menara KL, parent company sue govt for RM1bil over termination of agreement | New Straits Times KUALA LUMPUR: Menara Kuala Lumpur Sdn Bhd (MKLSB) and its parent company, Hydroshoppe Sdn Bhd, are suing the government for RM1 billion following the termination of the Kuala Lumpur Tower (Menara KL) management agreement.

It seems the new owners of the concession to operate KL Tower will start operating there next month.

I wonder what has happened with the corruption charges against the existing (or I guess it is now previous) KL Tower concession owner.

Lim Seong Hai Capital secures 20-year concession to operate KL Tower, starts April 1 ACE Market-bound Lim Seong Hai Capital Bhd (KL:LSH) has signed a 20-year concession agreement to operate and maintain the iconic Kuala Lumpur Tower, after almost a year it first announced the contract win.

𝗥𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗼𝘂𝘀 𝗠𝗮𝗹𝗮𝘆𝘀𝗶𝗮 𝗕𝗔𝗦𝗘 𝗧𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝟮𝟬𝟭𝟰 𝗙𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝟭𝟬 𝗬𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘀 𝗔𝗴𝗼

In 2014 I was keen to start rebuilding the multi-building BASE jumping event series that we previously had.

During the 2014 event series 4285 BASE jumps were completed. I managed to do 241 BASE jumps over a 3 week period, including my 3000th BASE jump, and 100 BASE jumps off KL Tower over 3.5 days. However, in every other sense I saw it as a disastrous event series. At the end of the event series, I immediately postponed my plans of further expansion until much later years when the situation with Malaysians undermining the integrity of events had stabilised. I also needed to wait for a time when BASE jumpers were really ready to treat BASE jumping events off buildings with the high level of respect they demand. 10 years later we have still not reached that point.

We were still 2 years away from the peak number of deaths in BASE jumping where there was an average of a BASE jumper dying every 2 days for an entire month in August 2016. But during the 2014 event series, I got a real sense that the intensity of BASE jumpers had dramatically increased, and that the BASE jumping community as a whole were charging towards tragedy.

𝗛𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗢𝗳 𝗢𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝘀
When I was first appointed BASE organiser of the annual KL Tower event in 2005, we quickly grew it into an event series that included several buildings throughout Malaysia. It was a BASE jumper’s dream travelling around Malaysia from one building to the next. The key person in facilitating it was the KL Tower CEO at the time, Dato Zulkifli Mohamad. He was a brilliant man who was great at securing buildings for us to jump from. However, it soon became clear that the original event series would not last long when he became very erratic with his event organising. Like many new BASE jumpers, the KL Tower CEO was in too much of a rush and developed a naive disrespect for the high risks of BASE jumping. He soon stopped listening to the guidance of his experienced BASE organiser and became infected with the dangerous misguidance of novice Malaysian BASE jumpers. There were also a few other international BASE jumpers with ambitions to take over the event who created havoc.

When I was removed from my role as BASE organiser at the peak of the original event series and replace with novice BASE jumpers who were charging towards tragedy, they quickly started losing buildings. A couple of the locations did not want BASE jumping back there due to the KL Tower CEO’s erratic and dishonest organising. When Dato Zulkifli Mohamad was dismissed from KL Tower in 2010, we were left with just KL Tower and Alor Setar Tower. Malaysian BASE jumper Aziz Ahmad and I had also started an event at Wisma Sanyan in Sibu which was outside of the chaotic control of KL Tower managers. Alor Setar Tower was lost in 2010 when their greatly decayed entry requirements resulted in the fatality of a beginner BASE jumper, as expected.

In 2011 I was reappointed as the KL Tower BASE organiser to bring back reasonable standards to the KL Tower BASE jumping event. It took a couple of years to start to get it under control with a few Malaysians still making efforts to undermine the integrity of the event.

𝗦𝗮𝗯𝗮𝗵 𝗕𝗔𝗦𝗘 𝗝𝘂𝗺𝗽 𝟮𝟬𝟭𝟰
In 2014, with the Sibu event going well for a few years, Aziz and I decided to slowly start re-expanding the event series by first just adding one building in Sabah. I saw it as a test to see if my co-organiser Aziz Ahmad, and BASE jumpers, could continue to behave. Aziz had always been extremely helpful, but he had a history of undermining event standards and safety precautions. He had also created many problems for events misguiding local event managers. One of the issues was that he would bring people with little or no experience. Not surprisingly, they often ended up crashing down a building. Fortunately, over the previous few years there had been a more astute no-nonsense CEO in place at KL Tower who helped to keep Aziz in line, along with a few other Malaysians who were constantly trying to undermine the integrity of BASE jumping events.

Everything seemed smooth leading up to the Sabah event. However, it quickly became an event series full of harsh lessons. With the KL Tower CEO moving on from KL Tower leading up to the event, my co-organiser Aziz Ahmad saw it as an opportunity to immediately go back to undermining event standards and safety precautions. I had seen in the past that it never takes long for Malaysian organiser's naive and carefree attitude to propagate to all BASE jumpers at events, and the carnage soon starts. It did not take long for the building we reopened in Sabah to get smashed up by BASE jumpers hitting it, and permanently shut down.

The first problem in Sabah was a person who I had declined his application due to his lack of experience turned up determined to gatecrash the event. We had problems with event stalkers and gate crashers in the past and needed to stamp them out. But Aziz insisted on letting this novice person jump. Aziz had no care about his obligation to building managers, who had entrusted their building to us, to maintain the highest of standards. I wanted no part of it, as I had seen the results many times before. But Aziz was the person who signed the contract with the building managers stating that he would be fully responsible for the event and any damage done to the building, so he could do whatever he wanted.

Seeing that Aziz was still unable to learn from all the past carnage and problems, it was the point that I realised that I could not be involved with Aziz again in organising events. He just did not possess the level of responsibility or integrity required. The person I rejected that Aziz let jump soon hit the building and smashed a window. The building managers graciously let the event continue, but that was to their detriment as the building would soon get much more badly smashed up.

The second issue was that Aziz had invited Malaysian retired BASE jumper Idros Yusop to pose as the organiser of all BASE jumping events in Malaysia. Aziz was not going to tell me about this as he knew I would want nothing to do with Idros. I was left to discover it when Aziz brought out the waivers for all BASE jumpers to sign and Idros was listed as the prime event organiser and had his company name all over it. While Idros was a nice person, he was even more of a dangerous organiser than Aziz was. Idros was the novice Malaysian BASE jumper who took over the KL Tower event in 2009 when the KL Tower CEO had stopped listening to experienced organisers and wanted a “yes man” who could follow orders to decay all event standards and safety precautions. After a very concerning 2009 event, I had warned Idros that if he continued to organise events in such a naive and reckless manner it would quickly result in a fatality. Knowing that he and KL Tower Managers would never learn, I soon gave up the warnings and eventually succumbed to the complacent and carefree attitude that everyone else had. Sure enough, on the very first day of their next event, which was at Alor Setar Tower, a beginner BASE jumper lost her life. She impacted at high speed before line stretch about 10 meters away from me. It was also in front of a crowd of spectators including many small children. Even though I had been thrown out of organising their events for a few years at that stage, I saw myself as more guilty of allowing that death to happen than the organisers, as I was the one who knew better. Under a new KL Tower CEO, Idros’s contract working at KL Tower was not renewed after that and he quit BASE jumping. But now he was suddenly back imposing his naïve, carefree, and dangerous attitude on our events again. I wanted nothing to do with him, as I knew how quickly his carefree attitude would infect even the most normally safety-conscious BASE jumpers at the event. It was very surprising that Aziz would invite Idros back to destroy our event, as when the fatality happened in 2010, Aziz was the person who quickly showed the KL Tower CEO my pre-warnings about the expected outcome and had Idros removed from organising BASE jumping events.

The reason Aziz was keen to work with Idros was that he came with a sweetener. Idros claimed to have a good connection to the Prime Minister of Malaysia (the one currently in prison due to corruption) who could make many building events happen. While this sounded like a great opportunity, I still wanted no involvement with Idros. I knew the high risks that Idros insists on taking with BASE jumping events would quickly get every building he opened up shut down. I was not interested in bringing a trail of carnage to building owners, or creating embarrassment for the Malaysian government who facilitated events to happen in a substandard manner, or to present BASE jumping in a reckless manner to the world. I was focused on raising the standards and integrity of BASE jumping events, to make them more sustainable in the long term.

Going against Idros and Aziz proved futile. When I was not cooperative with their substandard approach Idros effectively shut down the event for a while, by arranging for our support and rescue crew to not show up on the second morning. When jumping finally resumed, their carefree attitude spread to all BASE jumpers. Another person soon hit the building. Fortunately, the second building strike caused no damage. The care factor became so little that one of the more experienced BASE jumpers guided half the participants to day blaze another government building in full view of everyone during our lunchtime break.

I soon got lectured by Idros’s business partner after I refused to jump into a headwind, where they wanted everyone to jump when their VIPs arrived. Their VIPs had also created an extra danger by filling the landing area on the side of the building they wanted us to jump from with their motorbikes. The second person who hit the building had to work extra hard to narrowly avoid crashing into the motorbikes when he was flying in for an emergency landing. I was not interested in compromising my safety or breaching basic safety guidelines, so I continued jumping around the safe side of the building in regards to the wind. Idros’s business partner was more of a professional person with no previous exposure to BASE jumping. I explained to him about the risks of his demands and how it had resulted in people hitting the building at every event when those demands were followed. He started to understand a little, and would soon get a full understanding of that with another much more serious building strike.

The third building strike happened when a reasonably experienced BASE jumper decided to jump more to the upwind side of the building. This would give him slightly more height to do a slightly longer freefall delay, as it was clear of the single-level buildings that were directly below the more ideal launch point he should be jumping from with regards to the wind. A very experienced BASE jumper was encouraging him from the ground, yelling out to him to smoke it down. Of course, breaching the one main safety guideline I give to BASE jumpers never to jump into a headwind, he got a major off-heading opening. The headwind helped accelerate him into the building. On impact, he smashed a big window. Large shards of glass rained down the building, smashing through 2 more large windows on the bottom skirt of the building. This resulted in more shards of glass raining down both inside the building foyer and outside. The BASE jumper got sliced up with a huge gash opened up across his back.

We made a real mess of that building and I do not imagine we would ever be permitted back BASE jumping in the state of Sabah. It would be foolish for any building manager to permit it, particularly with Aziz and Idros trying to control all Malaysian BASE jumping events in a reckless manner.

Aziz was left with a RM30000 repair bill which I believe he never paid.

𝗦𝗶𝗯𝘂 𝗕𝗔𝗦𝗘 𝗝𝘂𝗺𝗽 𝟮𝟬𝟭𝟰
The next building we visited was Wisma Sanyan in Sibu. Idros came along trying to pose as the organiser of the event, but the local Sibu organisers were intelligent people who also wanted nothing to do with him. Idros wanted to set up a booth at the event where he could promote himself as the event organiser. However, the local event organiser ensured that whatever Idros was setting up was kept well away from the event area.

The problematic novice BASE jumper that gate crashed our Sabah event also turned up in Sibu to continue gatecrashing and causing problems for our events. This time not even Aziz was welcoming him, but he still managed to get to the top and do a jump.

2 more building strikes happened at Wisma Sanyan. It provided lessons and highlighted just how much more effort would be required to prevent them in future. The first person got their canopy turned around after hitting the building. He was unable to make the landing area and was left trying to fly between 2 flag poles. With his canopy clipping a flagpole he crashed to the ground breaking his heal. The second person's parachute opened 180° off heading and he immediately landed on a balcony. His parachute got hung up on the building just above the balcony. The strike-to-jump ratio for Sibu ended up being 1 in every 361 jumps. While this is much better than what current building events achieve, it was still a terrible result.

𝗪𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻, 𝗙𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗹𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝘂𝗻𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗼𝗽𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆 𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴
After Sibu we travelled back to Kuala Lumpur and jumped the Gua Damai cliff for a couple of days. During this time, against my better judgment, Idros’s business partner talked me into doing a display jump they had set up at the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry Building. By this time Idros’s business partner could see that Idros’s level of knowledge and the precautions he took were inadequate. I agreed to go with only a small number of people and at least have a look at it.

I had learnt the hard way in the past not to agree to do a display jump off a building that I have not previously fully assessed myself, as the Malaysian BASE jumpers have never been capable of doing a proper and thorough assessment. They are also not good at setting up building events in a satisfactory manner.

Arriving at the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry building we only got a quick glimpse at the outside of the building as we were immediately taken up to one of the levels for a press conference. With the quick look I got at the building, I could see it would be a very bad building to hit. We had already seen 5 building strikes at the last 2 buildings we had just visited, so it was quite possible someone would hit it. As the press conference was about to start, Idros arrived with many more BASE jumpers. This was outside of my agreement with his business partner. A promotional video was played showing all our past events, promoting Idros as the organiser of all of them. One of the more experienced BASE jumpers from USA sitting next to me during the press conference asked me if this was something we should just be walking away from. I immediately answered yes, and we considered leaving. But I knew I would face extra repercussions if I did, and I wanted the opportunity to assess the building a bit more. A building official or government minister started making jokes about how unimpressed I looked while was speaking at the press conference. He was excited about the jumps and seemed oblivious about the extra risk of the building, their poor setup, and just how much of a conman Idros was.

There was no safety briefing about jumping the building and its added dangers, not that Idros would have any idea about that. I am sure most of the BASE jumpers just saw it as an easy jump. As soon as the press conference finished, the BASE jumpers that Idros brought were in a rushed frenzy to get to the roof. I was slightly delayed getting to the elevator, grabbing some pamphlets that we could throw off the top to get an idea of wind flowing around the building, as I knew Idros would have nothing set up for wind indication. I was last to the roof and everyone was already geared up ready to go. A young Malaysian BASE jumper was in a rush to get off first straight into a headwind, unaware or carefree of the extra risks. I spent a bit more time assessing the wind and chose a more appropriate direction to jump in regards to the wind. It was an awkward launch point, as the building had not been well set up for a BASE jumping display.

Another BASE jumper later informed me that after I jumped Idros was again rushing people to jump in a headwind when his VIP arrived to watch from the ground. Idros seemed to be in a rush to produce the next BASE jumping fatality in Malaysia.

After everyone jumped, most BASE jumpers were packing in a rush to do more jumps. Fortunately jumping was stopped after everyone had done one jump and the VIPs had left. The strike-to-jump ratio was high on this trip, so it was highly likely a building strike would happen here with a high chance of it being fatal. It was not a building that I was interested in returning to for an event, as I knew the inevitable outcome that would not take too many jumps to happen.

𝗞𝗟 𝗧𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿 𝗕𝗔𝗦𝗘 𝗝𝘂𝗺𝗽 𝟮𝟬𝟭𝟰
Finally, the last building we visited was KL Tower.

When I first arrived at KL Tower the building manager gave me a long lecture about how bad the image of a BASE jumper hitting KL Tower was for them and their parent company. He was mostly speaking due to repercussions managers of their parent company had recently experienced from a particularly bad tower strike that had happened two years prior. It left me even more determined to eliminate tower strikes from the event.

I knew BASE jumpers would always become complacent during the event, no matter how much I educated them at the safety briefing about the key factors that always led to tower strikes. The biggest problem we had in trying to eliminate tower strikes was that the so-called event safety personnel that Aziz was contracted to provide, always encouraged BASE jumpers to breach safety guidelines and do exactly what leads to a tower strike.

With the event expanding in size and multiple launch points in recent years we needed something much better than what Aziz was capable of providing. But for unknown reasons, we were prevented from providing a suitable event safety crew. Aziz was always hired to be a safety liability to the event and essentially ensure tower strikes happen.

Aziz intended to bring Idros to KL Tower to be head of his launch point safety crew. Fortunately, KL Tower managers stated that Idros was never welcome back to KL Tower due to what he had done when he previously worked there. I was not privy to all the reasons, but it seemed something more than my objections to his involvement with BASE jumping events. This left Aziz short of so-called safety personnel. We were left with the dangerous situation of little or no coordination between the different launch points, along with the usual problems with the substandard service Aziz provides.

With an average of 1000 jumps per day during the first 3 days of KL Tower we were doing well at preventing tower strikes. However, during the last morning there were 3 tower strikes. All resulted in broken bones. The final tower strike was the most serious. I was at the launch point at that time and was guilty of a level of complacency that allowed it to happen. The wind was varying from a light to moderate cross wind with the direction varying at times up to almost 45° towards the tower. We felt the wind would be strong enough to push anyone who got a major off heading opening past the tower shaft. As the wind direction swung to almost 45° towards the tower I was on the verge of changing the launch point (not that there were great alternatives), but I hesitated when the wind direction slightly improved. Then a skilled BASE jumper got a major off-heading opening. He got blown around the side of the tower, then he slammed hard into the side of the tower. The person sustained multiple broken bones. He was knocked unconscious and his canopy flew away from the tower and crashed into one of the tallest trees in the middle of the forest that surrounds KL Tower. It took significant time to rescue him from the tree. Jumping was shut down after this due to deteriorating conditions with it raining for the rest of the day.

I suspect all tower strikes that morning were in similar conditions. It was a harsh reminder that if we want to stop people slamming into the tower, we need to make an early call to move the launch point when the wind direction turns to even at a shallow angle towards the tower, that everyone still wants to dismiss as a crosswind. It can be a hard call to make in varying wind. Particularly when alternate launch point options are not always so great.

The strike to jump rate for the KL Tower event ended up being just over 1 per 1000 jumps, which I have always considered bad for a massively overhanging tower where it should be easy to prevent tower strikes. If 1000 jumps are done every day, then that is an average of a tower strike every day. If the final day was just considered, when people were jumping in wind blowing at a shallow angle towards the tower, the strike rate was 3 in 227 jumps. This is a lesson that most BASE jumpers continue to ignore.

𝗘𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗔𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗵
A couple of weeks after the event series finished, Idros held a small event at the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry building for Malaysian BASE jumpers. It was no surprise to hear that one of them hit the building. But it was very surprising to me that the person reportedly got away with just a broken ankle. With no further information revealed about exactly what happened, nothing more could learnt from it. There was still no doubt in my mind that it would not take long for a fatality to happen at this building if more events were held there.

The following year Idros was planning a bigger event series but it never eventuated. Thankfully Idros disappeared from the BASE jumping scene for another few years. Presumably, his backers pulled out as they could see the Idros did not have the knowledge or integrity to organise such high-risk events in an appropriate manner.

With Idros no longer interfering with events, I just needed to reel in Aziz’s continued level of negligence. But Aziz just rebelled more and became worse every year. It took another 3 years to eliminate tower strikes from the KL Tower event. The final key of many steps was to replace Aziz and his crew with a knowledgeable and capable safety crew that could help quash the complacency that BASE jumpers gain throughout the event.

Finally having an event with zero tower strikes in 2017, after 17 years of events there, was a great achievement and a great step forward for BASE jumping events. But I would pay a high price for it, being villainised and run out of all BASE jumping events that I was involved with in Malaysia. The novice Malaysian BASE jumpers eventually took over organising all Malaysian BASE jumping events. They resurrected events at the Women, Family and Community Development Ministry building. As expected, they quickly achieved a fatality there. It was eerily an almost identical sequence of events as 10 years earlier when I was villainised, removed from organising events, and novice Malaysian BASE jumpers decayed events standards and safety precautions to set up the first BASE jumping fatality in Malaysia. But the second time around was much more hostile with many international BASE jumpers encouraging the Malaysian’s naive and reckless event organising. Many international BASE jumpers demanded I keep my mouth shut and just let the fatality happen. This was not because they were bloodthirsty people, they just had the same nativity, complacency, and denial that the issues we had seen every year for 2 decades were real or that they would continue to happen. It was very disenchanting watching them all insistent on charging towards tragedy in strong denial. No one had learnt anything from the peak level of deaths in BASE jumping a few years earlier, and all the carnage we had experience at building events.

Many BASE jumpers now despise me for speaking out and alerting building managers exactly what they can expect if they host a BASE jumping event from their building. For me, it was an embarrassment when building owners entrusted us with their buildings, and all we ever ended up doing was bringing people who ended up crashing into their buildings. I owe building owners a lot, much more than I owe BASE jumpers.

Nowadays the strike-to-jump ratio is higher than ever at building events. I do not see any BASE jumping event organiser delivering the safety precautions that building owners should expect. I only have to watch a few seconds of video from most of the latest BASE jumping events off buildings to see that BASE organisers and BASE jumpers remain very dismissive of all we have learned from more than 2 decades of building events.

https://www.businesstoday.com.my/2024/06/10/lsh-capital-aims-to-restore-kl-tower-as-number-1-iconic-spot/

It will be interesting to see if the new KL Tower concession owners bring back BASE jumping events to KL Tower. If they do, it will be more interesting to see if they do it in a responsible manner, or if they go back to the misguidance of the novice Malaysian BASE jumpers who have been notorious for undermining and decaying events standards and safety precautions.
Each time after leading experts were expelled from Malaysian BASE jumping events in favour of novice local BASE jumpers taking over, it quickly led to an expected fatality at Malaysian BASE jumping events. The Malaysian BASE jumpers have only ever learnt to take high risks and they continue to teach the new generation of Malaysian BASE jumpers false and dangerous information. They do not learn to BASE jump, they learn to luck jump, relying on luck for the inevitable issues not to happen. It has been sad to see KL tower managers and other building managers naively dictating this to continue. BASE jumping is not about charging towards tragedy, it is about applying the right knowledge to minimise the risks. If you do not have the right knowledge and skills then luck will soon run out.

LSH Capital Aims To Restore KL Tower As Number 1 Iconic Spot The concessionaires who were awarded the KL Tower management contract has assured a new vision for the iconic landmark that has stood tall since its inception. LSH BEST Builders Sdn Bhd and Service Master Sdn Bhd Joint Venture had been appointed by Public Private Partnership Unit, to undertake the o...