Even if you’re a professional you wouldn’t want to jump out of a plane without a parachute but you do have to go out of your comfort zone a little when you’re trying to make history and professional skydiver Luke Aikins certainly made history when he jumped from 25,000 feet with no parachute on.
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As supporters erupted into applause and cheered for the skydiver, he climbed out of the net and hugged his wife, Monica, and their 4-year-old son, Logan.
Aikins also admitted that he had almost had to cancel the jump because he was ordered to wear a parachute for safety and this would have made his landing more unsafe because of the extra weight.
At the last second, he flipped over on to his back and landed in the 100-by-100 foot net.
“I’m nearly levitating”, he said afterward. “I’ll just have to deal with the consequences when I land of wearing the parachute on my back and what it’s going to do to my body”.
A few minutes before the jump one of the show’s hosts said the requirement had been lifted.
Aikins was accompanied by three other skydivers, one collected the oxygen mask, another was carrying the smoke cannister and the third one was filming the act.
Aikins – who has more than 18,000 jumps under his belt – fell dead centre into the 100×100 ft net in Simi Valley, southern California, BBC reported.
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When his friend Chris Talley came up with the idea two years ago, Aikins acknowledged he turned it down cold. He’s been racking them up at several hundred a year ever since. He worked with Felix Baumgartner, the Austrian skydiver who set the record for the highest jump in 2012, falling 128,000 feet from the edge of space. The family owns Skydive Kapowsin near Tacoma, Wash.
