Skydiving
Why skydiving is a family affair for Luke Aikins
Plane Swap will see Luke Aikins and Andy Farrington skydive into separate planes. It'll be a world first, but almost as impressively, it's also an Aikins family first.
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Luke Aikins vividly remembers the magazine cover that would portend his future. It was the 1990s and the artwork on the skydiving magazine showed a biplane pointing straight downward, with a drogue parachute trailing behind it and a skydiver in a yellow jumpsuit flying level with the aircraft.
The idea would seem outlandish to a great majority of the population. A skydiver manoeuvring toward another plane and looking to get in? That wasn't just testing physics, but possibly rational thinking. For Aikins, it was more inspiration, fuelled by an ever-present feeling of continually breaking through barriers of conventional thinking when it came to flying through the heavens. "I thought how cool that was," said Aikins. "I always remember that photo. I wanted to do a version of that on steroids. It was somewhere in my future. I really, really wanted to jump out of a plane and get into another plane."
See history being made: watch Plane Swap live right here
On the cover of a magazine
© Luke Aikins
That day is coming. Plane Swap comes to life in a three-hour live broadcast on April 24 (or April 25, depending on your time zone). Aikins and his cousin Andy Farrington, both accomplished skydiving masters, will attempt a first-of-its-kind event where they each solo pilot an aircraft, put the planes into a nosedive, jump out of the planes, race through the sky into each other's planes, take control and fly away.
Yes, you just read those words. Never in the history of flight has a solo-piloted aircraft taken off with one pilot and landed with another – and the audience will see it happen live for the first and only time.
"I honestly think that doing something like this live is the only thing left with TV, in my opinion
Luke Aikins wants to show the world what he can do
© Michael Clark/Red Bull Content Pool
01
Taking off
The wins have been plentiful for Aikins throughout his life careening through the air. He's the third generation of pilots and skydivers. His grandfather Lenny Aikins starting a skydiving club and his father Lance Aikins was a skydiver and pilot who taught both Aikins and Farrington how to fly. Both got their pilot's licences simultaneously with their driver's licence.
Skydiving very much held Aikins's attention from probably as early as the black-and-white photo of him taken at three months old laying on the packing table of the family skydiving centre.
Three generations of Aikins go for a jump together
© Luke Aikins
Watching family members and others freefall and then glide gracefully through the air was captivating. And even living in stops in Florida, Guam and Japan – his father was in the Navy – he would watch unfathomable performances from Evel Knievel, as well as shows like Wide World of Sports and That's Incredible, which often tested the laws of physics for entertainment's sake.
"It was almost something that was unattainable to the rest of us," said Aikins. "I was like the rest, watching it on TV in awe. Those kinds of things were inspirational to somebody who aspired to be a skydiver."
Aikins did his first tandem jump when he was 12 and began skydiving when he was 16. From there his thirst for airtime was hard to quench.
Luke Aikins with dad, Lance
© Luke Aikins
"I was the kid that when we built the bicycle jump in the neighbourhood, I would build it higher," said Aikins. "We would go until you broke a person or a bike. If somebody went faster than you when we were running, you wanted to run faster than them. That the competitive nature; some people have that and they live to be fighting for first position, and then other people are just happy doing stuff. I think I always wanted to push the edge."
I think I always wanted to push the edge
He improved at skydiving so much that when he was still in high school, he was asked to parachute into the school's homecoming game with the game ball. Yet it wasn't just wanting to jump from higher and hit a mark the size of a frisbee. He was learning about the art form, trying to improve on his technique and also testing any limits.
"That was more the norm for me," said Aikins. "You're obviously looking to push from there and you just didn't know what was possible. Skydiving and knowledge of human flight, how we're able to steer our bodies and all the things we're actually able to do now – it’s kind of mind-blowing compared to when I started skydiving. The learning curve has ramped up so much."
When asked how to describe what he's feeling when jumping out of an airplane, Aikins compared it to jumping off a dock and into a body of water.
Luke Aikins jumping in Eloy, Arizona, back in 2000
© Luke Aikins
For anyone who's not done it, and for those who have only a handful of jumps, here's a tantalising description: "You're going, but your foot's still on the dock and there's no going back. That feeling is probably one of my favorite things about skydiving, that full commitment to what's about to happen. You can't go backwards, but it hasn't happened yet. That limbo-ey moment is kind of my favorite part.
"Once you jump out and the wind starts to take, you don't get that feeling of like a roller coaster. You feel almost like you're floating on a pillow of air. It sounds sketchy and crazy to someone who's never skydived before, but it's almost a calming feeling. You're falling through the air, but you feel like you’re laying on a giant cushion of air and what you do with your hands and your body moves you around the sky. It's such a free, fun feeling until it's time to open up your parachute and then everything gets fast again. But that middle of the skydive portion, it's such a surreal moment."
One of Luke Aikins’s early jumps
© Luke Aikins
As Aikins began to gain acclaim in the skydiving arena. His first event will forever be special to him, as he was set to parachute into a Seattle Seahawks game. A diehard Seahawks fan, this was a special moment for Aikins and he had a wrinkle he added in to his debut jump for the team.
"When I jumped into the Seahawks stadium, I didn't tell anybody, but I took a 12th Man flag with me into that game," said Aikins. "I opened up, pulled the flag out and hooked it to my foot. I had this 12th Man flag hanging. When I came into the stadium, I was flying one direction and needed to land the other way. I looked at the Jumbotron, I could see me flying into the stadium with the 12th Man flag and the smoke, and the crowd going crazy. It was one of my most memorable jumps of all time."
02
Space mission
A few years later, Aikins was asked to help out with a secret project. This request saw him jump with a camera on his head and film his skydive. It was for a project for an Austrian skydiver named Felix Baumgartner. After he landed, Aikins looked at the equipment Baumgartner was using and felt it was subpar. He said there were improvements that could be made and mentioned what could go wrong if those improvements weren’t made. A day later, in a practice jump, there were malfunctions that happened exactly how Aikins had said previously might occur.
His years of skydiving expertise would now serve him in a different fashion. Aikins was invited to join the Red Bull Stratos team, which was working to send Baumgartner to the edge of space to set the world record for the highest skydive in history. Aikins was given massive responsibilities from the start: “I ended up designing the equipment, training Felix to do the jump, working hand-in-hand with him for three-and-a-half years, designing all the equipment and basically running the skydive portion of the project."
Mike Todd, Felix Baumgartner, Joe Kittinger, Art Thompson and Luke Aikins
© Predrag Vučković/Red Bull Content Pool
He also got to work with John Kittinger, the man who held the record for the longest recorded freefall at 4m 36s. This proved to be equally as thrilling as working on the project itself. "I grew up as a little kid knowing who Joe Kittinger was," said Aikins. "I knew who'd jumped from the highest."
When the jump occurred on October 14, 2012, Aikins was in Red Bull Mission Control. As Baumgartner experienced fogging on his face shield, it was Aikins who was directly in communication with Baumgartner to talk him through what to do. As the jump from 38,969.4m above ground happened, Aikins was one of many team members feeling the thrill of shattering many records. Kittinger’s freefall record would remain intact, however, as Baumgartner timed out at 4m 22s before pulling the ripcord.
This project was especially important to Aikins's career, as it showed him a different way he could use his varied skills on a project that would thrill the world. "It also let me experience that I was engineering things. I was designing equipment. I was testing equipment. Things that I always thought I could maybe do, but I never had an opportunity to do," said Aikins. "What Stratos did is it opened my mind up that, even though I don't have an engineering degree from college, I can run a team and I can develop a flight test program. I can do all these things I thought I wasn't capable of doing. I learned all of that because of Stratos and them giving me more of the reins to make that jump happen."
03
Gigantic leap
What Red Bull Stratos did also was open Aikins up to other opportunities. He did some work in movies like Iron Man 3 and Transformers. He participated in a wingsuit race. He was also approached with an off-the-wall ideal: skydiving without a parachute.
Aikins initially dismissed it, saying that Gary Connery had already flown his wingsuit into a field of cardboard boxes to cushion his landing. This new idea, however, would be to jump from 25,000ft (7,620m) and freefall without a parachute. His landing would be cushioned by what could best be termed a giant slide, where he would hit high on the sidewall and come down and glide to the ground. He thought of his wife, Monica, and son, Logan. He passed, saying that he'd like to help them find someone to do it.
Yet the idea never left his mind. After a couple of weeks, Aikins started to ask himself if this could be possible. He started to formulate ideas and called back the people who'd pitched him on the idea. He proposed that instead of jumping into a giant slide, a large net would be constructed to catch him. When the sponsors went for it, the background work began.
The 30m x 30m net was perfected over time and Aikins made test jumps with parachutes, where he pulled the ripcord low to the ground. He would only do the jump without a parachute once, at the event on July 30, 2016, in Simi Valley, Califonia. He worked with a sports psychologist, Michael Gervais, to help him prepare.
Gervais asked how Aikins was approaching the jump, whether it was just another jump or the most momentous of his life. After much contemplation, Aikins determined it was just another jump and the pair worked accordingly to get the jumper in the right mindset.
When the date to jump came, it was another person close to Aikins who helped him. Farrington and Aikins grew close after Aikins's family settled in the Pacific Northwest. The pair had already performed thousands of jumps together and Farrington had worked on every Red Bull project with Aikins, with the exception of Red Bull Stratos.
Farrington was by Aikins's side during the ascent and noticed some nerves were hitting his cousin, so he did something that only close family members could do to release tension.
"Andy reached over and gave me a charley horse on my leg," Aikins recalled. "He meant, relax. I don't know how he could tell that I was freaking out – I had sunglasses and an oxygen mask on – but as soon as he did that I snapped out of it. I thought of all the work, all the training, all the preparation and everything that went into it and I was sure that everything was going to be OK. From that moment on it was just a jump, though there was a moment on the way up where I was like, 'What am I doing?'."
"I could see him just kind of sitting there and his wheels were turning, and he was kind of getting in his own head a little bit," said Farrington. "I noticed it and I just tapped him on the leg, like, 'Hey, just relax, chill out. We've got a long time.' He said that was pretty important and pretty key to kind of reset himself where he needed to be for that jump."
The jump itself was a spectacular feat. Aikins showed that his target from the plane looked like a postage stamp from almost five miles up. He was able to manoeuvre and do flips to prepare for landing. He locked hands with the other three skydivers, including Farrington, to make different formations. It really looked like another jump, until three of them pulled their ripcords and Aikins kept falling. Let's have Aikins describe what happened next.
"It's pure focus," said Aikins. "It's funny, because I hear the same story with athletes, whether it's a baseball player, football player or someone in the Olympics. Or a Navy SEAL going on a raid into a building to rescue somebody. I never thought that I would experience it the same way they describe things. In that moment your focus and training kind of just takes over.
"You're almost on autopilot, which is very cool because the physical acts you're not really thinking about. It lets you focus on all the external stuff that goes into making that jump happen. Where I need to be. What’s the wind doing? Where do I need to move? How do I set up? What's happening next? Everything slowed down, so that baseball looked huge coming at me. They call it being in the zone, or whatever you want to call it. I always thought that I'd experienced that, but in that moment, from like 5,000ft [1,500m] down, it was all just automatic. I had to say to myself to roll over.
"I had to roll over onto my back and I actually had to look blind at the sky just before I hit the net, but I knew I wasn't going to drift off the net because of all the practising and stuff we'd done. That moment, in that jump, everything was massively slowed down."
A couple of seconds before hitting the net, Aikins flipped so that his back would hit the net and his body would bend accordingly. Even though he hit the net just outside of the middle, he knew he was safe. He gave himself a moment to soak in the gravity of the accomplishment and when the net was lowered to the ground he stood up with his fists raised in triumph.
"When I saw the net come up at the corners and it rolled me into the middle, I vibrate thinking about that," said Aikins. "Even now, that's a rush and a feeling that I'm afraid to chase, because I'm afraid that I'll never experience that level again. The feeling was unbelievable and that feeling of accomplishment in that moment. I kicked and waved my arms for a second when I was in the net and then I stopped and didn't move at all. Everyone was worried for that split second, because I wasn’t moving. What I'd done at that time was what Mike Gervais, the sports psychologist, told me. 'Make sure you take a moment to enjoy this.' After that burst of emotion after I landed in the net, I took a second, took a breath and I couldn't believe it. We did it."
04
Meet Andy Farrington
Andy Farrington is a big part of that 'we', both for Plane Swap and throughout Aikins's career. Though he's six years younger than Aikins, Farrington has more of a brotherly relationship with his cousin. The two own homes on the same 40-acre plot in Washington state and both of their homes have plane hangars and plenty of area to skydive. Their children have grown up about as close as siblings and like Aikins, Farrington was skydiving on his 16th birthday.
Andy Farrington preparing for another big BASE-jump
© Ryan Taylor/Red Bull Content Pool
Farrington is an accomplished athlete in his own right. An expert in wingsuit flying and able to perform skydiving acrobatics, Farrington has been one of the go-to people for some high-profile jumps. He won the inaugural Red Bull Aces wingsuit race in 2014 and he was one of the many wingsuit flyers who lit up the night sky over Los Angeles in 2019 during the most recent Super Moon. BASE jumping around the world has been his calling card and he's also been in movies, even making several wingsuit jumps from the Sears Tower in Chicago during a movie shoot.
Andy Farrington performing a wingsuit dive at Red Bull Rampage
© Christian Pondella/Red Bull Content Pool
Farrington will continue to push the envelope, as he finds new destinations to conquer for never-before-seen jumps where he’ll be "flying wingsuits past some pretty iconic locations, whether it's Mount Rushmore, the St Louis Arch, the Hollywood sign or flying by some pretty iconic locations – maybe capping it off at the Statue of Liberty."
05
Plane Swap
All that history made Farrington a natural to partner up for Plane Swap. The pair work closely almost daily, making refinements at their home bases. Occasionally they trek down to San Luis Obispo in California for more training sessions with the lead engineer on this project, Paulo Iscold. The focus is on thrilling the world with another event that will be talked about for years to come.
"The goal is, I'm going to fly one plane and he's going to fly the other one, nobody else in them," said Aikins. "We’re going to go up to 14,000ft [4,267m] and we’re going to put the planes in a formation dive at the ground, with the speed brake out where they're locked in where there's no way out and they can't fly away. We'll push them over into this dive and they’ll be on a trajectory headed straight to the spot over the desert. At that point, I'm going to get out of my plane, he's going to get out of his, and we're going to switch planes."
Planes flying at sunset
© Michael Clark/Red Bull Content Pool
Already the pair have done practice jumps from planes using the speed brake specially created for their Cessna craft. The goal is to be able to successfully get into the second plane, though that one will already have a pilot.
"It's taking almost every notion of flight and almost crumpling up and throwing it away," said Farrington. "Like, we're trying to create some drag. We're trying to make the airplane fly straight down at a reasonable speed and making it so it works for our needs. With the science behind it, the data and everything that we adjusted and tweaked, it's really close to being the way we want it."
See history being made: watch Plane Swap live right here
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