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Red Bull’s Dario Costa flies plane through twin tunnels in world’s first such stunt

Team MVR

MyFlight
Guinness Record

“I’d never flown in a tunnel in my life – nobody had ever done it – so there was a big question mark in my head whether everything would go as we expected,” said Dario Costa who set a Guinness Book of World Record by flying his aeroplane through a tunnel speeding through two of them near Istanbul at average speed of 245 kmph.

 

“It was a big relief, of course, but big, big happiness was the main emotion. For me, it’s another dream come true,” he added just after dawn on Saturday, September 4, 2021.
The professional race and stunt pilot, fired up his specially modified Zivko Edge 540 race plane inside one of the dual Çatalca Tunnels on Turkey’s Northern Marmara Highway.
With over two decades of flying experience and numerous aviation feats to his credit, the 41-year-old Costa had been dreaming of a Tunnel Pass for years, and it was his most demanding and complex undertaking yet.

Surrounded by the concrete arc of the walls, Costa took off in the dim light of the first tunnel at 6:43 am. Limited overhead clearance meant that he had to keep the aircraft on a flight path just above the asphalt while also managing a claustrophobic margin of only about four metres between each wingtip and the unforgiving walls.

One of the most critical moments came when the plane flashed through the 360m gap between the tunnels, which exposed the lightweight aircraft to crosswinds as Costa threaded it into the narrow opening of the second tunnel.

“Everything seemed to be happening so fast, but when I got out of the first tunnel, the plane started to move to the right because of the crosswinds and in my head, everything slowed down in that moment,” explained Costa.

From take-off to exiting the second tunnel, the flight covered a distance of 2.26km. And in less than 44 seconds, Costa set the certified Guinness World Record plus four more records.

The Tunnel Pass flight was recognised with a Guinness World Record for Longest Tunnel Flown through with an Aeroplane (1,610m). The four other notable records were: first aeroplane flight through a tunnel, longest flight under a solid obstacle, first aeroplane flight through two tunnels and first aeroplane takeoff from a tunnel.