This is just all kinds of outrageous. Last November, a skydiver jumped out of a helicopter, glided down into the Grand Canyon wearing a wingsuit, turned around to face the sky, and hooked up to a plane flying above him so it could tow him up and away into the air.
That’s the world’s first mid-air plane hook maneuver – and a testament to skydiver Max Manow’s ambition to push the boundaries of extreme aerial sports.
You can watch the stunt below in a freshly minted video, and get a glimpse behind the scenes at the meticulous preparation and planning that went into putting the project together.
World First! Plane Tows Skydiver Out Of Grand Canyon 🇺🇸
Of course, Manow didn’t work alone. The 35-year-old German skydiver, one of the four members of the Red Bull Skydive Team, partnered with aerobatic pilot Luke Aikins to pull it off. Aikins, who’s a part the Red Bull Air Force and a skydiver himself, modified his Cessna 182 aircraft to fit a large handlebar at the bottom of the fuselage that Manow would hold on to, and added an experimental airbrake.
Michael Clark/Red Bull Content Pool
Manow also had to chart his path through Hell Hole Bend, a chasm located along the Little Colorado River in the Navajo Indian Reservation. Using lasers, he determined the depths of the canyon that he could navigate safely after leaping out of the helicopter at 10,000 ft (3,050 m), and before hooking up to Aikins’ nosediving plane.
Moving precisely through the air to meet the plane proved very challenging. “The first time I was able to attach to the handle, it was so difficult,” Manow explained. “The airflow was very different, and it was throwing me around. I had to learn a lot of different ways of flying.”
Michael Clark/Red Bull Content Pool
Miraculously, Manow made it work. After successfully hopping out of the chopper, gliding through Hell Hole Bend, and grabbing hold of the handlebar attached to the plane, he ascended back up to 2,500 ft (762 m) in the air before freefalling safely back to solid ground.
With that, Manow has demonstrated what he’s calling an “endless skydive,” meaning that he could potentially extend his wingsuit flight continuously without needing to land. Manow is keen to see if this feat unlocks new avenues for the sport of skydiving, which typically sees athletes compete to achieve the highest speed in freefall, and accurately land on small prescribed patches of land. In the meantime, this marks an incredible achievement in his 23-year-long career in the sky.
Michael Clark/Red Bull Content Pool
If that wasn’t enough adrenaline for you, a previous bonkers wingsuit stunt from 2017 is equally jaw dropping, in which a pair of skydivers BASE-jumped off a mountain summit, and entered a passing airplane.
Source: Red Bull
