Plan de Corones — known locally as Kronplatz — sits at 2,275 metres above South Tyrol's Puster Valley, a limestone summit crowned by Zaha Hadid's Messner Mountain Museum and ringed by cable-car stations that deliver 15,000 skiers daily in winter.
In summer the plateau transforms into a launch site for paragliders, who use the mountain's reliable thermal columns to stay aloft for 20 to 40 minutes above the Dolomites. The summit's exposed position — jutting between the Puster Valley to the north and the Gader Valley to the south — creates consistent upslope winds that converge at the peak, lifting paragliders to altitudes of 3,000 metres on strong days. Certified tandem pilots have operated from Kronplatz since the late 1990s, when the first commercial flights began using the Olang cable car to reach the summit.
Tandem paragliding Kronplatz tours depart from a grassy launch field 200 metres west of the Hadid museum, a six-minute walk from the cable-car station. The site offers 270-degree visibility: the Zillertal Alps rise to the west, the Tre Cime di Lavaredo's three towers mark the eastern horizon, and the Marmolada glacier fills the southern view. Flight paths vary by wind direction and pilot preference, but most descend over the Furkelpass saddle before spiralling down to landing zones near Bruneck or Sankt Vigil. The paragliding season runs from May through October, with July and August offering the strongest thermals — afternoon updrafts routinely exceed four metres per second, allowing extended flights that cover 12 to 15 kilometres.
The Kronplatz summit has been a tourist destination since 1870, when the first alpine hotel opened near the current cable-car station. Modern lift access arrived in 1959 with a chairlift from Olang, replaced in 2008 by a 10-passenger gondola that completes the ascent in 11 minutes. The mountain's paragliding infrastructure expanded in 2014 when local operators established a dedicated launch area with wind socks, storage lockers, and a packing zone for canopies. Today Kronplatz serves as one of the Dolomites' three primary tandem paragliding sites, alongside Seceda and the Alpe di Siusi, hosting approximately 2,500 commercial flights annually.
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