Photo: Michael Clark/Red Bull Content Pool
Red Bull Air Force members Luke Aikins and Andy Farrington are aiming to make history next month when they attempt a death-defying feat thousands of feet off of the ground.
On Sunday, April 24, Aikins and Farrington will try to switch planes mid-air in a stunt at Sawtooth Airport in Eloy, Arizona, that can be seen exclusively on Hulu, according to a press release from Red Bull.
The planes will be “completely empty” and facing the ground when Aikins and Farrington attempt the daring switch, which will air during a three-hour livestream event.
In the release, Aikins called hisPlane Swap"the natural progression and culmination of my life’s work as a professional, both in the air as a pilot and skydiver and on the ground as an innovator."
“It’s the pinnacle of my career and my goal is to inspire the world and show that anything is possible,” he continued. “You can set your mind on something that at times seems wild, crazy and unattainable, but through ambition and creativity, you can make it happen.”
To complete the feat, Aikins and Farrington will fly a pair of Cessna 182 single-seat aircraft up to 14,000 feet before putting them into a vertical nosedive and jumping out, with the goal of skydiving into each other’s planes.
The cousins will stop the planes' engines and aim them toward the ground as they complete the stunt. A custom airbrake with the ability to hold the planes in a controlled-descent terminal velocity speed of 140 mph will also be utilized to complete the trick.
After catching up to the opposing stuntman’s plane, Aikins and Farrington will enter the cockpits and turn the planes back on as normal, piloting them to land.
Michael Clark/Red Bull Content Pool
Aikins is an experienced skydiver, having completed more than 21,000 jumps throughout his career. Farrington, meanwhile, has completed 27,000 jumps.
“[T]here was a parachutist with a Stearman biplane engine in a dive at the ground, and there was a drogue chute … holding it up so it could go slower. And there was a guy in a big floppy yellow jumpsuit skydiving next to the airplane. And I just remember that as a kid and I always had that picture and I always wanted to do a version of that,“he explained toComplex. “It was just a dream to be able to do something like that, and originally it was just a skydive next to a plane.”
When he first became a Red Bull athlete in 2006, Aikins was asked to list “some projects that you would like to do before your career’s over.” After some thinking, Aikins asked a neighbor to draw up the plane swap concept, though he didn’t focus on it until several years later.
“Then after the no parachute jump, I said, ‘Well, I’ve always wanted to do this.’ And I sent ‘em back in the picture and here we are,” he toldComplex.
One of the major roadblocks in creating the successful stunt was finding a way to keep the planes in control as they descended. As a result, the specially-designed airbrake system was installed on the underside of the aircrafts with the goal of controlling “aerodynamic stability” during flight.
“I call it more calculated than crazy,” Aikins said of the stunt toComplex. “We work really hard to make sure that everything’s going to be okay. We don’t flip a coin and fingers crossed and hope it all works out. We mitigate the risk down to something that’s acceptable and what’s acceptable to me.”
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“What’s great about this with Andy and I is we think a lot the same,” Aikins explained toComplex. “So while he’s not here working on this … Andy will come down and he’ll do it with us and I just use him as a sounding board because I know we have the same risk factor where we both accept some stuff and we see things the same way.”
He added, “So it’s really unique to work on a project with someone that you’re so close to and you’ve done 5,000 skydives with.”
Plane Swapairs Sunday, April 24 beginning at 7:00 p.m. ET on Hulu.
source: people.com
