Luke Aikins insists he does not have a death wish. When he jumped from a plane at 25,000 feet above the Earth without a parachute in 2016, then plummeted in free-fall before landing on a relatively tiny, 100-foot by 100-foot trampoline net, he says that so much technical planning went into the “Heaven Sent” stunt that it would have been difficult for him to fail. If he did, of course, it meant certain death when he hit the ground at well over 100 mph. He had no backup plan.
Aikins’ coming stunt, jumping this time with a parachute from one plane in a nose dive into another plane, also in a nose dive, is not as risky, or so he says. The “Plane Swap” project is courtesy of Red Bull, known for outrageous stuff like this, and is scheduled to take place live, on Hulu, April 24. We caught up by phone last week with Aikins, 48, who also had been involved with the Red Bull-Felix Baumgartner Stratos project in 2012. Following are edited excerpts from a longer conversation.
Jim Clash: How did you conceive of this stunt in the first place?
Luke Aikins: I’m a third-generation skydiver/pilot. In the 1990s, I saw a magazine photo of a parachutist in a yellow suit free-falling next to a Stearman biplane in a nose dive with a big parachute behind it. I thought, “Man, that’s really cool, I want to do that.” Then, as I got older, I thought, “I don’t just want to do that, I want to do it on steroids, Luke-style.” I submitted the idea to sponsors a long time ago, before I did my no-parachute jump. On that one, I proved you can do things that seem crazy by mitigating risk to an acceptable level through flight-test preparation. After the no-parachute jump, people asked what I was going to do next, maybe jump higher with the net on fire [laughs].
Clash: What exactly does this new plane-swap stunt entail?
Aikins: Myself and flying partner Andy [Farrington] are going to take two Cessna 182s up to about 14,000 feet, then cut the engines and deploy speed-brakes. Both planes essentially then turn into falling rocks in a vertical formation heading straight toward the ground. By modifying the planes, they will reach a terminal velocity of only 140 mph. Once that happens, each of us is going to hop out, and match that speed. I’m going to fly over and get into Andy’s plane, and he’s going to fly into mine, while nobody is at the controls. Then we put the planes into climbs. We have about 40 seconds to complete the moves.
Clash: This will be on live TV. What happens if something goes terribly wrong?
Aikins: First, we’re over a deserted area, so there’s nobody at risk except me and Andy. We have parachutes on, and automatic openers on the reserves, so if we were to smack our heads or something, they will deploy. There is a bit more risk with the aircraft. That said, if we don’t get into the planes for some reason within the 40-second window, there are automatic parachutes that explode out the back of the planes and float the things down. I’m not Alex Honnold [who climbed El Cap in 2017 without ropes or protection]. There is more perceived danger here than actual danger.
Clash: Seems like with this stunt, you need to have a lot of trust in your partner.
Aikins: Yes, that’s really important. Andy is my cousin. We have thousands of skydives together. We also fly all kinds of airplanes, too. It’s kind of like with athletes who’ve played together for a long time, say Tom Brady and Gronk [Rob Gronkowski]. When a play breaks down, nobody else knows what’s going on, but those two are talking without talking, know what I mean? That’s the way Andy and I communicate in the air. On the ground, it’s like everybody else, but not in the air. When stuff breaks down up there, that’s when we do our best work.
Clash: What are you afraid of, and how do you handle fear?
Aikins: With these projects, there’s a healthy level of fear, but you can’t let it rule what’s happening. Fear keeps you on your edge. What I’m afraid of is that something I haven’t thought of, or my engineers haven’t thought of, happens. What’s it going to be, and how are we going to deal with it? Every time you do something, there’s something that pops up.
Clash: What do you want the takeaway for young viewers to be?
Aikins: That the science, the math, the research, STEM, all of supercool stuff that goes into this project, is vital. We’re not just winging it. There is a purpose.
