Captain flies without aircraft

You settle into a Swiss airliner and hear the welcome "this is your captain speaking". You picture a reassuring guy with four rings on his sleeve, greying temples and the steady hand of command. Now try imagining your captain leaping into the sky dressed only in a flying suit and a pair of wings and answering to the the name Jet Man.

Implausible as it may sound, this is the double life of Captain Yves Rossy, 47, a devoted  -- some would say mad -- aviator who has come closer than anyone so far to achieving the ancient dream of flying like a bird.  If you think the festive week has got the better of me, watch Jet Man's video . It's not quite Superman or Icarus. He straps a pair of wings to his back and swoops around the sky with the help of four tiny jet engines. Few might want to try, but no-one else has done it.   

I have just had an agreeable chat with Rossy and warmed to his passion. In the news business you often come across people -- in politics, business, sport, the arts --  who are obsessed with a personal quest and immune to risk. Such absolute single-mindedness is usually the requisite of high achievement and it can also create unhappiness. Aviation has always been pioneered by such eccentrics and, with his boyish enthusiasm and lifelong devotion to the air, Rossy is clearly one of them. 

Before flying for Swiss, the successor to Swissair, he was a fighter pilot with the air force. He is also a star in the fraternity of sky surfers and wingsuit flyers. These are the extreme sky-jumping types who over the past 20 years have devised ways of gliding through their free fall wearing wing-like suits or standing on boards.

Rossy has spent all his money on his Jet Man project and he is also in the midst of divorce. Now, rather than steering his Airbus around Europe and stacking up his future pension, he is thinking of taking three years of leave to perfect and commercialise Jet Man. Paris Match magazine has just devoted seven pages to him, which should help his search for sponsors.   

"It's a compliment if someone says I'm a bit mad," says Rossy. "In our society no-one wants to take risks any more. No-one wants responsibility. I take calculated risks that could finish in the grave. But I like what I do and there is a certain grandeur in doing it.

"But when I am the captain of an Airbus, it's zero risk," says Rossy, who flew British Hawker Hunters and then French Mirage IIIs for the air force. "I don't have anything to prove in an Airbus. With passengers, I don't play the fool. But when I'm alone there's a big difference." 

Skimming the Alps at up to 300 kph (187mph), so far the only thing that the  Rossy has run into is the Swiss law. "They were totally confused," says the bird-man. "The authorities said I was an unregistered aircraft and to fly, you need a licence. I told them, 'No. To fly, you need wings'."   

Rossy's pioneering feat is the product of guts and daring plus the rapid development of technology in recent decades. After the 20th century invention of flying machines, the purists have been able to get back to basics with hang-gliders, ultra-light craft and the use of light composite materials like the Kevlar used for Rossy's folding wings. The new miniature jet engines have enabled him to overcome the oldest obstacle -- a source of lightweight power. 

Like the wingsuit flyers, Captain Rossy jumps from an aircraft uses a parachute to land. His breakthrough is staying aloft, which he achieved in 2004. This year he began climbing. So far, fuel limits have kept his jaunts to six minutes, but he is making progress.

"I can go up at 1,000 feet per minute at 100 knots (112mph) but it's really just the beginning," Rossy says. "The next step is more powerful engines and a lighter, more efficient wing for aerobatics. I'll be able to climb vertical like a fighter." He also aims to take off from the ground.

"I fly with my body," says Jet Man. "The wing is just a device that lets me to remain free in the air. I move my head a little and I turn. Or I put out my leg a few inches and I banks and descend...I play with all the elements of flight that i know so well."  The only mechanical input is a motor-cycle grip that controls thrust.

Explaining his passion, Rossy says: "I fly, I do not pilot".  Piloting an airliner is like steering a submarine. "You are inside a machine, out of touch with the surroundings. Human flying is like diving with an aqualung. You are in the sea. You play with the elements." 

He aims to market his contraption as a pure fun machine, like a water jet ski for the air. The cost would be about the same as medium car or a micro-light aircraft. There might also be a military use (His device has nothing in common with the crude rocket pack worn by James Bond in the 1965 Thunderball).

He is looking for investors. "There is a huge potential future in this. It's the dream of rocket man, Batman, Matrix. I am not the only person who wants to live their emotions. There is a niche there for machines like this...But of course, it's not the kind of contraption that you should strap on anyone's shoulders."

Rossy, by the way, has solved his trouble with the authorities and flies with a special permit. He does avoid airspace where he is likely to meet aircraft.

Comments

[Roger Goodacre]

Impressive. Unfortunately it looks like the dream kit for the next generation of suicide bombers.

[Peter Newman-Legros]

A Boy's Own story if ever there was. This may be the way forward for those seekers of danger and thrills and for whom leaping off a cliff attached to elastic has lost its appeal. To really fly like the birds though would require a device that enabled human flight at walking or running speed rather than airplane speed: to be able to flit from place to place whilst enjoying the view and the pace rather than the "rush". That said I have no doubt Jet Man has a future.

[Frank Schnittger]

Mad people used to be called bats. Now they fly like them as well! Rossy probably has a big future as a stunt man for future James Bond films and such like. The problem is that special effects have become so pervasive in films that viewers don't know what's real and what's not. Most film viewers wouldn't bat an eyelid at someone taking off with just a pair of wings and a mini jet pack.

But it's not so batty to want to escape from the humdrum world of commercial flying. Deep-sea diving submersible submarines are called bathyscapes - so mayby Rossy's device should be called a battyscape...

Either way Bat Man seems a more appropriate name than Jet Man. At least the caped crusader had a sense of style. If Rossy really wants to market the concept he will have to develop versions with flowing capes and tales, eagle like wings and talons, firebreathing dragons... it could be the must have Christmas present for kids in a few years time!

[Robert Marchenoir]

Aha! It's Aeronautics Saturday again.

Friendly warning to Charles: do not attempt this in your living-room. Or backyard. Or anywhere else.

[christopher muir]

High above the Bois de Vincennes in 1937, a successful young American daredevil called Clem Sohn was routinely swooping and diving in a blue sky below the aircraft from which, at 6000 metres, he had just leapt. Known (then) as "The Batman" he wore a webbed flying suit, making him world famous as an Icarus of the time. As The Batman approached the ground fast, 100000 spectators were shocked to see his parachutes tangle. No engine in those days for Clem Sohn to reverse direction...it was one way only and all over very quickly. Did Paris Match mention this pioneer who lost his life in Paris all those years ago?