The ultimate rush

It’s July 30, 2016, and Luke Aikins, 41, is on his way to 25,000ft – jumping altitude – above the Simi Valley, California. His one-time-only mission: to promote Stride Gum, a subsidiary of Cadbury, by… well, focusing some attention on himself. 

But this is no ordinary parachute jump. Atkins will be leaving the plane without a parachute.

Aikins’ team has worked for months on the design of a 30m x 30m polyethylene net, hung between cranes and tensioned by air pistons, just 70m off the ground. Aikins expects the net to catch him, like magic – just three-tenths of a second before the dirt. It will be an unlikely and unprecedented miracle. Certainly it will capture world attention regardless of the outcome!

It sounds mad, but Aikins – a veteran member of the Red Bull Air Force – is in his comfort zone. Unfortunately, SAG, the American Screen Actors Guild, is not. And because Stride Gum has live TV cameras on hand, SAG gets to say whether or not Aikins is allowed to leave the plane without a ’chute. Aikins is ascending anyway. 

“When they wanted me to wear a parachute there at the end, (wife) Monica and I had a long talk and we decided that I wasn’t going to wear it no matter what,” says Aikins, now. “Monica had total right to veto at any stage. But we had decided.” 

“I’m not usually a rule breaker guy, but I didn’t know until after I landed that they had given the green light to do it without the parachute. I took it off way before I knew whether I had permission.”

The result, of course, went Aikins’ way. Broadcast live on US TV, the jump project – marketed as ‘Heaven Sent’ – went viral, as well as appearing on every major international news channel. 

“It was definitely received a lot bigger and better than I expected,” he says now. “I mean, I expected it to go reasonably viral, but that wasn’t why I did it! But I’m happy. If people didn’t tune in and check it out then I wouldn’t be able to do all the cool stuff that I do.”

That list of “cool stuff” is impressive. A multi-disciplinarian, with engineering chops – the concept of the net, its development, its pistons and guiding system was all Aikins. The Washington native has 18,000 parachute jumps to his name. He has appeared in skydiving sequences in films such as Iron Man III, trained US Navy SEALS, and perhaps most famously, trained fellow Austrian Red Bull athlete Felix Baumgartner for his world record 2012 leap from a helium balloon in the stratosphere. (Like Aikins’, Baumgartner’s space-suit clad jump went very, very viral).

While mostly behind-the-scenes, his role in that record attracted a lot of interest. And so, when approached by Stride Gum to fund a jump without a parachute, any way Aikins wanted – what publicity! Aikins was granted full development and concept control. He felt, finally, “like this was my opportunity to be The Guy”.

Now he is.

Less well known, but equally impressive, was a project Aikins completed over a snow-dusted Moab, Utah, just seven months before his now-famous solo jump. A member of the Red Bull Air Force, Aikins flew the lead parachute in Chain Reaction, a Red Bull clip in collaboration with Audi. The resulting video, and the associated behind the scenes clip, was an incredible success.

“What we were trying to do with Chain Reaction was include as many stunts as we could, with as many different aerial disciplines as we could, in one sequence,” says Aikins. 

In the air, the video features a pair of skydivers/high-speed parachutists – lead by Aikins – a trio of wingsuit pilots, two BASE jumpers and an aerobatic plane pilot. On the ground: a driver.

Proximity flying, aerobatic stunts, wingsuit gliding, high-speed canopy flying, skydiving, high-speed formation flying, BASE jumping and proximity wingsuit flying are all shown. As they enter the narrative – dropping from helicopters, or leaping from Moab’s iconic rock formations, each aerialist times his arrival, interacting with his inter-discipline counterparts via mid-flight stunt choreography. It’s truly spectacular, if also tense, and a bit mad; an action sports fever dream by Michael Bay or Jerry Bruckheimer, but no CGI. It has to be seen to be believed.

Throughout, they’re thrillingly shadowed by a speeding Audi RS 7 Sportback. Carving and careening across the sluicing red dirt trails of Moab, the car – driven by US rally driver and drift-series champion Rhys Millen – plays a key role. In the passenger seat, radio to his lips, is the on-ground coordinator, peering aloft.

Chain Reaction was six months in preparation. The resulting clip has been viewed over 800,000 on Red Bull’s YouTube channel – and over 284,000 times on Audi Australia’s own Facebook page.

“I could have played any of the roles – BASE jumping, wingsuiting, I fly helicopters, I have an aerobatic airplane,” says Aikins, “although I couldn’t have done what [world champion pilot] Kirby Chambliss does! And I’m not a race car driver, either. That guy, Rhys Millen, is really cool.” 

“I was one of the guys flying the parachutes, with the wingsuits next to us. 

“Everyone follows me, and I lead them along the top of that cliff edge, so they all end up and land in exactly the right spot, simultaneously. It was a lot of pressure, but it was really fun, as well.”

And with fewer objections from the SAG.

‘Really fun’ might not be everyone’s summation of Luke Aikins’ day job. But as an embodiment of Vorsprung durch Technik – or ‘Advancement through Technology’ – he’s hard to best.