Man Flies Across Channel Using Suit

An Austrian extreme sports fanatic crossed the English channel in an unpowered flight in July, wearing only a specially adapted suit with a wing-like carbon fin on the back. Amazingly enough, no one else had ever crossed the channel that way.

Felix Baumgartner jumped from a plane about 30,000 feet over Dover, England, then glided the 22 miles over the channel, landing by parachute at Cap Blanc-Nez, near Calais, in France. The flight took about 10 minutes.

In freezing temperatures, the 34-year-old Austrian began the flight at a speed of about 220 miles per hour before slowing to around 135 miles an hour.

He told Britain’s Sky News: “It was pretty cold up there. I still can’t feel anything.”

He said cloud cover meant he could not see where he was going and had to follow his two planes across the Channel.

Baumgartner was also the first man to parachute from the world’s tallest building, Malaysia’s Petronas Towers, as well as from the statue of Christ in Rio de Janeiro.

There’s no word on whether Baumgartner’s suit will render the Chunnel obsolete.

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