On June 3, a 37-year-old Swiss insurance expert flew over Galway Bay, a bay on the west coast of Ireland – which under normal circumstances isn’t necessarily earth-shattering news. BUT Ueli Gegenschatz dispensed with a plane, helicopter or similar aerial vehicle for the 17.6-kilometer journey and chose a simple wing suit for his locomotion; and at the same time made the world record for the longest wing suit flight in history.
It’s quicker to fly solo
Apart from this, flying from Inis Mór over Galway Bay to Connemara Regional Airport near Inverin, the man, akin to Superman in his suit, won a substantially unequal duel. Gegenschatz, who jumped out of a plane at 4500 meters, took less time to travel the distance than the Britten-Norman Islander airliner from Aer Arann Islands which flies the same course. While the passenger jet took exactly seven minutes to cover the 17.6 kilometers, the Swiss solo flyer landed at the airport within 5:45 minutes. His average speed during his record attempt was 250 km/h; his gliding rate (the ratio between height loss and distance covered), about 1:4.
BASE jumper with a bag full of records
‘I was quite lucky with the tail wind,’ the Red Bull Acro Team member explained about his breakneck speed. Just recently Gegenschatz completed a BASE jump from the Eiffel Tower; two years ago he jumped from the Swiss mountains Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau in one day. Replying to a reporter’s question on what he considered to be the ‘strongest emotional experience of this crazy Irish jump,’ Gegenschatz replied drily: ‘The view wasn’t too bad at all.’ (source: event’s PR)