Pilots Try To Swap Planes Mid-Air — It Doesn’t Go As Planned

For nearly three hours on Sunday night, Hulu hyped a “first-ever” attempt by two pilots to fly side by side, jump out of their planes, skydive to each other’s planes, land inside and pull out of free fall.

It did not go as planned.

The two pilots, cousins Luke Aikins and Andy Farrington, took off from an airport near Eloy, Arizona. They flew to 12,000 feet and then deployed specially designed air brakes intended to control the planes’ free-fall descent.

That’s where things went wrong.

“Footage shows the moment the two Cessna 182 planes nosedive before the pilots jump out,” The Sun reported. “They were about 12,000 feet in the air when they jumped out. But, one of the aircraft is seen spiraling out of control.”

This #RedBull #PlaneSwap in Arizona was crazy! Didn’t go as planned but luckily everyone is alright! pic.twitter.com/f9cpRclYtT

— Aaron Tevis (@AaronTevis) April 25, 2022

Aikins successfully skydived into the other plane and landed it safely, while Farrington did not attempt to board the spiraling plane in its nosedive and instead just parachuted back to Earth. That plane had a parachute and Aikens said it deployed and the plane landed without incident.

“It just went and instead of stopping in that 90-degree dive, it just kept going and got over on his back,” Farrington told USA Today. “You’re just happy everybody’s here and good and all that stuff, but just disappointed.”

Aikins said: “This is the best outcome of a bummer situation, really.”

“I thought I left Andy a good plane. I’m trying to think of what else I could have done to make it better for him when I left,” said Aikins, who noted the two pilots were able to test everything beforehand except the dive itself. “We do what we can to prepare for this stuff and we hope it never happens. This is the best outcome of a bummer situation, really.”

And the pilot added: Aikins said “we are going to go back and figure this out.”

Before the “plane swap,” Red Bull touted the stunt on its website: “On Sunday, April 24th, Luke Aikins and Andy Farrington will go down in history as the first pilots to take off in one aircraft and land in another after sending their airplanes into a nosedive and jumping out of them!” promoters said in a statement.

“This is an event that’s hardly been conceptualised, much less attempted. Never in the history of flight has a pilot taken off in one plane and landed in another. Yet this milestone features not just one, but two pilots who are going to simultaneously perform a feat that may last all of 40 seconds but will be an engineering marvel that will have taken the better part of a year to execute,” Red Bull said.

Joseph Curl has covered politics for 35 years, including 12 years as White House correspondent for a national newspaper. He was also the a.m. editor of the Drudge Report for four years. Send tips to [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @josephcurl.

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