Red Bull.com

“If you’re not growing, you’re dying, right?” asks Red Bull Air Force member Luke Aikins. With two decades of experience in the air, Luke’s primary aim is always to keep growing his talent, and to bring out the talent in others. While he’s logged over 14,000 skydives, has excelled in competition, establish\hed three world records, and is a popular performer in demos year round, Luke is also respected for his skill in teaching, his knack for innovation, and his dedication to advancing airsports safety. He has a history of tackling aviation challenges that go beyond the norm – and a hell of a lot of fun doing it.

Luke is part of a skydiving dynasty. “My gramp skydived till he was 86, and my dad, my sister, my brothers, my cousins… we all got into it,” he says. He made his first solo skydive at age 16, eventually adding BASE jumping to his repertoire. A veteran contender in the Pro Swooping Tour, in 2008 Luke also notched a win at the Red Bull Blade Raid, a radical event that combines flying a canopy with running skis for 60-mile-per-hour descents around mountain obstacles.

Since that victory, Luke has devoted much of his time to progression of a non-competitive sort: research and development of equipment and flying techniques that may someday enable freefall at ultra-high altitudes. From proposing and developing new parachute deployment mechanisms to personally participating in test jumps at 28,000 feet, Luke has been a go-to consultant for researchers. He is also one of the designated Safety and Training Advisors for the United States Parachute Association – collaborating with manufacturers, USPA officials, and the world’s top parachute pilots to develop and advocate training techniques, procedures, and regulations intended to advance skydiving safety.

Luke teaches at all levels, both at his home field of Kapowsin Air Sports in Washington and on location. He has coached NASCAR’s Brian Vickers and regularly instructs members of the military on cutting-edge skydiving techniques. An expert aerial photographer, Luke has been published in major newspapers and magazines worldwide. (Readers of “Penthouse” may have been surprised to pull out a centerfold of fully clothed male skydivers – but the image Luke captured was too spectacular for the editors to resist.)

As much as he loves advocating flight, Luke also loves taking it to the next level himself. He now owns an aerobatic airplane and is learning to fly it, manning the controls while his cousin, RBAF member Andy Farrington, reads instructions to him from a book. “One way or another,” Luke says, “I’m flying all the time.”

Keep up with Luke: www.redbullairforce.com