He said in the run-up to the jump that he had consistently been hitting a much smaller target, giving him greater leeway with the full-sized net.
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Luke Aikins landed squarely in the center of a 100-foot by 100-foot, two-tiered net created to catch him.
After just a few moments, Aikins rolled out, got up, picked up his wife, and gave her a celebratory hug.
Aikins used a “mystery device” to make his perilous descent, shown during a live television broadcast dubbed “Heaven Sent”.
Professional skydiver Luke Aikins attempted the unthinkable on Saturday – diving out of a plane at 25,000ft without a parachute before landing in a safety net just above ground level.
“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous”, he told an interviewer just before boarding the plane for the jump.
For the first 10 000 feet of the fall, Aikins used an oxygen tank – one of the three other skydivers who jumped with him was in charge of collecting the discarded tank.
“I’m nearly levitating, it’s incredible”, he said after Saturday’s jump. They then opened their parachutes as Aikins fell to the net alone.
Luke Aikins, 42, is a veteran with a massive number of 18,000 jumps.
“I kind of laugh and I say, “Ok, that’s great”.
A couple of weeks after Talley made his proposal Aikins called back and said he would do it.
Luke Aikins trained for about two years for the jump.
Aikins, who claims it is a world record for jumping without a parachute, previously worked with Felix Baumgartner on the Austrian daredevil’s 2012 record skydive which started 24 miles above the earth. He is a third-generation skydiver and his family owns Skydive Kapowsin near Tacoma, Wash.
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Aikins is also a safety and training adviser for the United States Parachute Association and is certified to teach both students and skydiving instructors.
