Luke Aikens | Michael Clark/Red Bull Content Pool
Two pilots will take to the skies and make history on April 24, when they attempt a daring aerial stunt that involves equal parts pluck and prowess. It’s the first time the feat has ever been done – and it’s happening right here in Arizona.
The plan, dubbed Plane Swap, is the brainchild of brazen pilot and professional skydiver Luke Aikins and he’s performing it with his Red Bull teammate – and cousin – Andy Farrington.
Picture this: Aikins and Farrington each operate their own Cessna 182 single-seat aircrafts above a desolate strip of desert in southern Arizona. Once they both reach an elevation of 14,000 feet, they will pitch their respective planes into a nosedive position. As the planes are perpendicular to the ground, the duo will leave them temporarily unoccupied while they cross paths midair into each other’s moving aircrafts.
The performance, which will be streamed live on Hulu at 4 p.m. Arizona time, serves as a career-defining moment for the two Red Bull Athletes and a pioneering milestone in aviation history.
Aikins is a third-generation skydiver and pilot. His father was a naval aviator to whom he credits his fascination with flying. Being in the air is in his blood. “I would say I was a pilot before I was a skydiver,” he says. “But after I think about it, my mom skydived when she was pregnant with me so maybe I did jump before I flew.”
As a child, Aikins would accompany his dad in the cockpit. “Some people’s parents took them to baseball games and soccer tournaments,” he says. “My family, all of our leisure activities were based around aviation, so it just kind of became part of me and what I do.”
In 2016, Aikins became the first person to skydive from mid-tropospheric altitude (25,000 feet) and land safely without a parachute. He likens piloting planes – and jumping out of them – to joyriding in a car without roads. “Imagine the road is everywhere. There are no limits to where you can drive that car,” he explains. “That’s what it feels like to me. There are no roads. It’s three-dimensional freedom.”
Red Bull reached out to Aikins because of his reputation in the skydiving sphere. He ultimately joined the energy drink’s team, which specializes in highly coordinated aerial dive demos and is perennially pushing the boundaries of human flight. “To be a Red Bull Athlete, it’s not just the skills to do the sport. It’s not just the athlete side if it,” he says. “You’re an ambassador.”
The Plane Swap concept is a culmination of Aikins’ life’s work as a professional in the air, as a pilot and skydiver, and on the ground as an innovator, he says. While it may sound crazy to many, the concept is carefully calculated. In fact, Aikens prefers to call it a project over a “stunt” or “spectacle.”
“There’s such a weird perception when you say ‘stunt,’” he explains. “We mitigate the risk down to what’s acceptable. It might sound crazy… but we run a flight test program and we mitigate as many risks as we can down to what’s acceptable for us.”
Hundreds of hours of research and development have gone into ensuring that the project is possible. Aeronautical engineer Dr. Paulo Iscold advised Aikins and Farrington throughout the planning process to guarantee that the planes maintain a controlled terminal velocity that closely matches the speed of the skydivers’ descent. Though Aikins and Farrington have practiced the maneuver many times individually, they have not actually swapped planes. Aikens says he wants to wait to do it on the big day so that it will truly be the first time it’s ever being performed. “Obviously, we’ve done a lot of testing where we’ve jumped out of the plane and flown next to it, but we’ve never done the swap because I feel like I’m not one of those guys that wants to fake it,” he says. “When we do it for real, I want to be doing it.”
Though he feels prepared at this point, Aikins admits the nerves are starting to build and the pressure of being the project manager, designer, pilot and performer is coming to a head. “When you first become a Red Bull Athlete, they ask you to produce a few ideas, whether it’s winning world championships or a special project that you want to do, something in your career before you’re done,” he explains. “Most of the time, you don’t get to do those types of things. I was fortunate enough that I had the idea a long time ago of how to make this happen.”
Inspired by a photograph in an issue of Skydiving magazine from the 1990s that depicted a biplane with a drogue shoot next to a diver in free fall, Plane Swap has been a long time coming. “Originally, I just wanted to skydive next to an airplane in free fall. But I was like, ‘You know, that’s been done,’” Aikens says. “I don’t really want to repeat something that’s been done. How can I do it my style? How can I do that on steroids? How can I ramp it up to Luke style?”
Of course, the project wouldn’t be possible without Farrington, an accomplished pilot who has also logged more than 27,000 dives in his lifetime. Aikins says the two grew up together and have a deep level of trust and connection. “We’ve done so much flying and jumping together that it’s like a second language,” Aikins adds.
Aikins and Farrington opted to wear parachutes “because there are too many variables.” Several things could go awry but Aikins says that plenty of practice and the project’s location help eliminate those risks.
Why Arizona? “First and foremost, [it has] the best dependable weather of anywhere in the world,” Aikins says. “You also have some parts that are very desolate, where if something were to not work out, there’s no chance of hurting someone or impacting anybody in a negative way.” Plane Swap will also take place just before the sun sets because “it’s really hard to beat an Arizona sunset.”
The project’s aim is obviously to entertain, but Aikins says it is much deeper than that. “One of my main goals in everything that I do is to inspire and to have people think outside of the box and that anything is possible,” he says. “I don’t think people are going to be jumping out of airplanes without parachutes or jumping from one plane to the other, [but] see that anything is possible with some hard work, a good team around you and an actual program, like a flight test or risk mitigation.”
With this particular project, Aikins also hopes to renew the interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). “When people think of engineering, some people think of it as boring, just sitting at a drafting table or something,” he says. “We’re trying to show them that engineering is all of these things. I wasn’t great in school, but I also don’t think I was as motivated because I wasn’t shown this whole world that’s out there that requires all of these talents.”
When asked what he is most looking forward to about Plane Swap, Aikins laughs and says “the 25th of April,” when he can spend time with his family and return to his “normal” life. “Then I want to kick back and help other people accomplish their dreams. I’d love to see a young version of myself that has that fire and that desire to do some amazing things and help them accomplish something,” he says. “It needs to be somebody else doing this stuff soon and I want to encourage that.”
Tune into Plane Swap on Hulu on Sunday, April 24 at 4 p.m. PDT/7 p.m. EDT. For more information, visit redbull.com/us-en/events/plane-swap.
