Missed.
For a few years now Fred and I wanted to
fly into a plane
and recreate Patrick de Gayardon’s 20 years old stunt.
One morning Vince told me he had the idea of jumping off a mountain into a plane.
We wanted to honor what Patrick did 20 years ago but in our own unique Soul Flyer’s way.
Attention… attention…
Go!
We didn’t just say "Hey let’s jump off a cliff and into a plane",
it involved a huge amount of preparation
to get the good vibes, the good positions,
it was on our minds for months.
We started to fly on the end of the wings,
then we closed in on the wing struts
and then we started the part of the training focused on actually getting into the plane.
"At the beginning, we couldn’t get into the plane,
we didn’t have the right reference points or trajectory
we hit the sides a few times and we could have hurt ourselves.
It’s all down to mental strength we’re up against a plane,
a big lump of flying metal that we’re trying to throw ourselves into and it’s frightening.
"My vision was good, I could see above Phil
but at the last minute I closed my eyes and ended up looking down. "
"For my part I really needed to be mentally strong
when we did the first training sessions we were convinced that the day we removed the doors
we’d get into the plane on our first attempt
but the first time I hit my ribs
I landed after making 4 attempts and hitting the side 4 times,
I realized it was going to be harder than I thought.
"They tend to arrive like this and not like this
or at least that’s the impression I’ve got.
We’ll see what they think though.
"We wanted to have Yves Rossy as co-pilot and coordinator
because he knows the Swiss mountains so well
him being an ex-fighter pilot was a huge advantage to us.
There’s Philippe who knows his plane really well and we have complete confidence and he’s a great pilot.
"I’ll move backwards, take a deep breath, check my visual
and start my approach,
and fly into the plane…"
Vince is already approaching.
He's in.
Perfectly, softly does it!
Here comes the second one!
We actually got in 7 times each in 2 days
we felt comfortable and thought we could try it from the cliff face.
The priority was to find the right spot.
"The Jungfrau instantly sprang to mind
because we heard it was the longest wing suit base jump in the world
with a 3200m drop."
"There’s the Jungfrau and at the end of the glacier
ideally it’s a change of leader.
That’s when I’ll announce that I’m taking the lead.
Here we’ll give you the “Go for entry”.
"The most important was the coordination
the hardest part of this project was that at the beginning we had no speed
and the plane was already flying at 150km/h.
It was the last unknown point that needed sorting out
and we realized right from the first test flight that it worked well.
If one of us hits the side he lies flight and gets out the way
and if he gets out the canyon, he gets out and if not he lands.
Safety was extremely important with this project.
Like in all our projects we try to imagine all possible scenarios
and come up with a plan.
We needed to have sufficient height throughout the flight
so that if we missed we could keep on flying."
It was important to have Yves there
so that Philippe could concentrate on the instruments and the flight path
while Yves could look around and keep us informed using the radio contact
we had with both the pilot and the co-pilot.
Vince and I were in the Lauterbrunnen valley helicopter zone
we were dropped off just next to the Jungfrau summit at around 4000m altitude.
We walked along the summit’s ridge with the guide then down to the exit,
When we finished getting ready, did up the wingsuits
we were already in radio contact with Philippe and Yves who are about to arrive.
Pilatus, on configure, 30 seconds to go.
The plane arrives, 30 seconds to go, he turns on his lights.
We’ve got him in our sights, 15 secs, 10 secs
we lower our visors and we jump!
Phil said he’d take the lead we look up and he’s already there
we’d never reached the plane so quickly, it was perfect.
I positioned myself just right there wasn’t any turbulence
I got a little bit closer, I didn’t want to go in too fast.
Vince is closing in.
I took a deep breath and started my float up
and at that moment I suddenly realized I might not make it.
I rotated and hit the side of the door.
Time sped up in my mind and I thought “That’s it, I’ve missed it”."
He’s missed but we’ll carry on.
Fred said he was going to give it a go.
I took a deep breath, started to think about my position
I started my float up to get the right trajectory to get into the plane.
He rises, he’s a bit close,
he rotated and hit the side of the door too!
I saw him mess it up too and thought “No! No!”"
He missed it too.
I thought “it’s ok we can do it, we’re just too close”.
We tried to getting in too slowly.
We wanted to get back out there straight away
so we got everything ready and with everyone’s help
we got back out there in less than 2 hours.
We got in the helicopter, in deep concentration,
The helicopter dropped us off on the top of Jungfrau.
There was so little wind that we saw a butterfly right next to us at the summit,
we thought it might have been Patrick de Gayardon
coming to say “Today’s the day, you’re going to do it”."
Attention…
attention…
go!
Okay, we’ve got one, ready for the second one.
All these months of preparation, doubts, stress and fear and we’d done it.
2m30 earlier we were at the top of the cliff with a knot in our stomach…
and then we’re sat comfortably in the plane with closed parachutes
we could open our wingsuits, make the most of it,
we saw the helicopter, heard our mates on the radio,
it was a spectacular moment!
When we got out of the plane we were over the moon to see Philippe,
who shared all of this with us, flying over 100 flights together.
It was amazing.