Wingsuit Flying
World first: Watch two wingsuit flyers soar through London's Tower Bridge!
Two professional skydivers had only one chance to make their dream come true – and fly through the world-famous London Tower Bridge. How did they land?
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Two Austrian freefall skydiving pioneers completed the first wingsuit flight through London Tower Bridge. Marco Fürst and Marco Waltenspiel had one chance and took it – and soared through the famous bridge in the heart of the city at an astonishing 246kph.
For Fürst and Waltenspiel, the wingsuit flight was a dream come true. “It’s just insane to get this opportunity to fly through such a unique landmark,” says Waltenspiel. “You see action like this in films, but to actually do it ourselves is amazing!”
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Historic wingsuit flight: How they did
The skydivers Marco Fürst and Marco Waltenspiel leapt from a helicopter west of London Tower Bridge on May 12 at 5:22am local time. The morning’s conditions needed to be perfect to ensure a safe flight.
Taking the jump
© Peter Salzmann/Red Bull Content Pool
- They dropped from a height of 914m, 1.2km west of the bridge to get precisely the right speed and angle of descent
- Their ‘squirrel suits’ provided the wingsuit fliers with 3m of horizontal travel for every 1m of altitude lost
- On their flight, they reached speeds in excess of 246kph
- The window between the towers they had to pass through was 65m x 32m
- The flight was about 45 seconds long
- After passing the bridge, the pair pulled a complex manoeuvre, climbing rapidly to around 80m in order to pull their parachutes
- They landed safely on barges in the middle of the River Thames
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Training for the wingsuit flight: Over a year of hard work
Fürst and Waltenspiel started training for this day in 2022. The Austrian duo moved to a training ground in Oxfordshire, where they recreated the dimensions of Tower Bridge by flying between two carefully positioned cranes. These whopping 200 practice flights helped them define the project's specifics, including the optimum height to drop from: 914 metres.
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Can wingsuits gain altitude?
Marco Fürst on the up side
© Dominik Angerer/Red Bull Content Pool
Wingsuits can gain altitude, but only for a short time. On passing safely through the bridge, the Red Bull wingsuit fliers rose into a steep climb called a ‘flare’, in order to slow down and get enough altitude to safely pull their parachutes for landing.
This flare took them rapidly from an altitude of 30m to a height of 80m.
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How is it possible to land with a wingsuit?
Marco Waltenspiel sticks the landing
© Mark Roe/Red Bull Content Pool
Apart from the obvious challenges of precision flying, the Marcos were concerned with their safety when it came to landing on designated barges in the River Thames.
"One of the main dangers on this flight was the water. We are very happy to have avoided the Thames because it's super cold and very fast-moving. We would never have attempted this flight without special water safety training and support boats on standby," says Fürst.
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