BASE jumping is the sport of jumping from fixed objects. "BASE" is an acronym that stands for the four categories of objects from which one can jump:

When Malaysian skydivers Captain Abdul Rahmat Omar and Lt. Aziz Ahmad, and Canadian BASE jumper Martin Dumas first requested to jump off Menara Kuala Lumpur in 1999 for its 3rd anniversary, permission was granted. The dream of KL Tower International BASE Jump came alive.

KL Tower International BASE Jump has had a long journey since its inception, going through many high points and a few low dark periods. The rapid expansion of the event in the early years with both safety and enjoyment being a priority gave it the status and reputation of being a world-leading BASE jumping event.

But it did not take too many years for KL Tower managers to become very complacent and lose sight of the high-risk nature of BASE jumping. KL Tower management started organising their events in a very naïve and reckless manner. They replaced their world-leading BASE jumping organiser Gary Cunningham with a novice Malaysian BASE jumper Idros Yusop who greatly decayed all event standards and safety precautions. Event management was strongly warned that it would result in serious injury or death, which very quickly eventuated on the first day of the next event at Alor Setar Tower in 2010 with the death of a very inexperienced BASE jumper. There were also several other near-death experiences at KL Tower the following week.

The fatality was a wake-up call for KL Tower management who were shocked by the incident. A new KL Tower CEO was appointed to KL Tower could see how reckless previous management had been at organising their BASE jumping events and tried to put the event back onto a more responsibly organised path.

Highly experienced BASE jumping organiser Gary Cunningham was rehired to bring back satisfactory standards to their event. However, it remained a difficult task with local Malaysian co-organiser Aziz Ahmad always undermining event standards and safety guidelines. KL Tower management a lot of effort and money into trying to improve the event and safety standards every year, but much of their efforts were misguided channelling event funds towards local event contractors who did not have the necessary knowledge, skills, or integrity to supply services required for a safe event.

Attempts to move event contractor Aziz Ahmad away from his areas of insistent negligence failed each year. High up managers insisted on continuing to channel event funds towards Aziz to supply event crew who always had no knowledge skills or training and would obliviously incite serious accidents every year. The crew would freely admit they know nothing about BASE jumping and were not there to provide any level of safety. When asked to correct safety issues in 2015 Aziz’s attitude was “Nobody cares, so why should I.” Either KL Tower management had great ignorance of how bad the situation had become, or there was something very corrupt going on.

The situation deteriorated in 2016 when Mohd Dzulfiqhary Ibrahim became Events Manager at KL Tower. He appeared to be very dismissive and carefree about the negligent manner their BASE jumping event was organised. The usual problems with Aziz and his crew became much worse to the point where we would say Aziz was purposely sabotaging the safety of BASE jumpers. KL Tower management had also introduced what we label as force marketing extortion practices for participants families and personal crew. They insisted that it was to enhance the experience of BASE jumper’s families. But only left everyone with a mass case of food poisoning, destroying their holiday to Malaysia after a couple of days. No apologies or refunds were given by KL Tower management.

In 2017 there was no way that we could have Aziz working in his areas of negligence at the event. Instead of Aziz being replaced, the local event management company that organises the event was replaced with another company where a family friend or Aziz’s worked. So, again we were stuck relying on Aziz and his crew which was far from acceptable. Gary Cunningham brought in a team of trained volunteers to work alongside Aziz’s paid so-called safety crew to help rectify serious safety issues. Aziz’s crew would show up as jumping was about to start at the event stating that they had no knowledge, training, or instructions from Aziz other than to show up there. They declined any on-the-job training and disappeared for the rest of the event. Gary and his volunteers worked overtime to successfully eliminate tower strikes from the event for the first time ever, along with several other regular types of incidents. There was a huge difference in the event without the usual chaos and carnage that Aziz always brought to the event.

This should have been a start of setting up future events in a much more professional manner and stepping up event safety to an acceptable level. However, new KL Tower Event Manager Mohd Dzulfiqhary Ibrahim was strangely very upset with Gary’s success at eliminating incidents and neutralising their negligence and again expelled him from the event. Aziz had been assigned to find another organiser to replace Gary.

In 2018 a new KL Tower CEO was appointed. He followed Aziz’s guidance to hire a new BASE jumping organiser who had very limited recent experience at KL Tower and had recently been released from several years of prison. The new BASE jumping organiser informed BASE jumpers that KL Tower manager requested to ban anyone going to Sibu BASE Jump which was organised by Gary Cunningham. Soon after Gary publically exposed the new KL Tower managements insistent negligence and their efforts to sabotage extreme sports tourism events in Sibu, he received a threatening letter of intention to prospect from new KL Tower CEO Datuk Rozlan Mohamed insisting all statement made by Gary Cunningham were false. A meeting was arranged to discuss what was actually false. The new KL Tower CEO who had never been exposed to BASE jumping before insisted he believed there were no safety issues with BASE jumping, despite there being many serious injuries and a death at their event before. He also insisted that their new organiser must have made up the storey of the requested ban on Sibu participants. But they protected their new organiser from making any sort of admission. A couple of days later the BASE jumping event when ahead with a record number of tower strikes, and a record number of people crashing into and getting hung up on objects on the side of the landing area (including the novice BASE organiser). As a return of serious canopy collisions, and numerous other issues. The CEO could hardly argue that no safety issues with their event with the same accidents happened, with the same mistakes made. It is uncertain why they would go out of their way to ensure all accidents happen at the BASE jumping event.

In 2019 the event was degraded again. KL Tower management decided to get rid of the new organiser in a subtle way where he would just quit because it was no longer worth his while. They would then promote Aziz Ahmad well past his level of experience and integrity to organise the event. The event saw a return to BASE jumpers receiving multiple broken bones, and Aziz almost got himself and another beginner BASE jumper killed in a very serious canopy collision. There was no doubt they were heading down the same path as 10 years prior when they had a fatality at a Malaysian base jumping event.

In January 2021 Aziz organised a BASE jumping event in Putrajaya where a Malaysian BASE jumper died. It was no surprise that going back to using novice Malaysian BASE organisers produced a fatality. All Malaysian BASE jumpers there at the time are forbidden from talking to experienced BASE jumpers about what actually happened, so the full truth cannot be learnt to help prevent the same thing from happening in future.

It remains to be seen if KL Tower managers continue down the same naïve and reckless path of attempting to organise BASE jumping events, or if they decide to go back to doing it more responsibly with highly experienced and very knowledgeable BASE jumping organisers.

History of BASE Jumping Events at KL Tower