Parachutist flies over the Alps in a wing-suit
Hurtling over peaks at 500 km an hour (310 miles an hour), a Swiss man flew over the Alps in a wing-suit yesterday.
His team said it was the first time the mountain range had been crossed in such a free fall.
Parachutist Remo Laeng, 36, jumped from a plane 7,500 metres (24,600ft) up, near the Swiss ski resort of Verbier and sped south over the Alps.
Laeng flew for 4 minutes before crossing the 4,314 metre (14,153 feet) high Grand Combin peak in southwest Switzerland to mark the feat.
Wing-suit flying, first devel- oped in the 1990s, uses a special jumpsuit with webbing between the limbs to add surface area to the body and give it lift to enable to wearer to glide towards the ground before deploying a parachute.
Laeng triggered his parachute after a seven-minute ride, covering 26 km (16 miles) horizontally, before landing safely in Aosta, Italy, Swiss news agency SDA re- ported.
One of his greatest challenges during the flight was judging whether he had enough altitude to get over the Grand Combin.
Laeng jumped from above Verbier in temperatures approaching minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit, attaining air speeds of up to 310 miles per hour.
'My altimeter didn’t work,' he was quoted as saying by SDA. 'The sky was so clear I saw the ocean off of Genoa.'