Imagine soaring through the air with nothing above, below, or around you but a jetpack strapped to your back. With your new wings outstretched, you fly through the air like a falcon, climbing and diving at will. If this sounds like something you’d see in a big budget Hollywood action film, you aren’t that far off, but it’s just another day in the lives of ‘Jetman’ Yves Rossy and ‘Jetman Junior’ Vince Reffet.
These incredible wingsuit pilots are showing off jet powered wingsuits, which allow the pair of daredevils to take flight 4,000 feet off the ground and hit speeds of up to 120 miles per hour in ways that human beings never have before. These two wingsuit experts recently performed a stunt that saw the pair flying alongside the Airbus A380, the largest passenger plane in the world.
High above the sky of Dubai, Rossy and Reffet leaped from a helicopter hovering at 5,500 feet before breaking away into formations on either side of the plane. They swung around the plane “like mosquitoes beside a gigantic eagle” according to the Jetman himself, Yves Rossy as they soared over iconic images of Dubai such as the Palm Jumeirah and the Burj Khalifa.
Adel Al Redha, Executive Vice President and Chief Operations Officer for Emirates, said of the stunt, “This display between man and machine celebrates the magic and beauty of flight, a feat which just over a hundred years ago would have seemed an impossible dream.”
A spectacular sight to behold indeed, the Jetman team appears to be taking preconceived thoughts of what is possible in the world of aviation and speed.