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1st ‘plane swap’ in midair to be attempted by pilot cousins

Stunt airing Sunday on Hulu

Pilots train and test dive in San Luis Obispo in preparation for the Plane Swap live feat on April 24, 2022. (Michael Clark / Red Bull Content Pool)

It’s a stunt that you might not even believe will be real until you see it live.

Two pilots, who are cousins, will take to the California skies on April 24 to attempt a never-before-seen stunt.

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Luke Aikins and Andy Farrington who are pilots for the Red Bull Air Force aviation crew, will fly their own planes so close together that they can then attempt the first “plane swap,” according to ABC News.

Once close, the two Cessna 182 single-seat aircrafts will take a nosedive and both pilots will skydive into the other’s plane. If all goes as planned, the pilots will then land the planes.

The unimaginable stunt, happening at 14,000 feet, will be streamed live on Hulu.

According to Red Bull, this has never happened in the history of flight with a pilot taking off in one plane while landing in another plane.

“There’s a whole bunch of very cool engineering going on, some fancy designs,” Aikins said. “The big thing is we have to prove that these planes, basically they change. It’s almost like a transformer. When we put this giant brake down and turn the engine off, it’s impossible for the plane to fly anymore. It’s now a falling object. This plane is no longer aerodynamically possible to fly. It’s just kind of falling through the air until you get back in it and switch everything over and turn it back into an airplane again so that it can fly. You couldn’t land it with this brake down. When this happens, it’s going to be one of those cool moments for me that we jumped through every hurdle. We took a lot of no’s, and here we are, ready to make it happen.”

To learn more about the engineering side and how the team is defying physics, visit RedBull.com.


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