THE heart-stopping plane stunt was performed by Polish pilot and Aerobat Luke Czepiela who attempted to land his plane on the 27-meter-wide helipad of Dubai’s Burj Al Arab hotel.
Czepiela has been training with Red Bull’s acrobatic camps for more than a decade, and on Tuesday, he operated a plane specially modified for the stunt.
In a video shared by the Dubai media office, the 39-year-old Polish pilot can be seen approaching the helipad located 212 meters high on the 56th floor of Burj Al Arab.
For reference, a standard runway is 2,500 meters long while the smallest commercial airport in the world is measured at 400 meters.
A pilot needs at least 250 meters of space to work with an aircraft but in Czepiela’s there was no runway, no landing strip, the helipad is only 27 meters long, and most of all, there was no backup plan like parachutes, ejection seats, or emergency cushions in case things go wrong.
Landing a plane on a platform raised hundreds of feet in the air, next to a 56-storey building, and with no visual cues to guide him made it an extraordinary feat.
The Polish pilot revealed it took him more than 650 practice landings before he was able to achieve the record-breaking attempt and had been preparing for this moment since 2021.
