Reporter: Liz Hayes
Remember when you were a kid, imagining you could fly?
Well, fasten your seat belts, that childhood dream's about to come true.
You're about to see proof that humans really can fly like birds.
Full transcript:
LIZ HAYES: They are the 21st century birdmen - Rocketing past cliff faces, swooping through valleys. Defying death and gravity at 180km/h... ..and held aloft by nothing more than a wingsuit.
GLENN SINGLEMAN: You fly like a bird, like an eagle like a hawk like you imagined it was when you were a kid. You streak across the sky. It's fantastic, it is personal, human flight. There is nothing like it, except being a bird.
HEATHER SWAN: We can be up there and be flying around in the clouds geeking at each other, barrel rolling, playing with the birds. That's just fun, it makes me happy.
JEB CORLISS: We're able to not just fly but we're able to fly under things fly in contours of things fly with cliffs and actually fly the contours of the cliffs right next to it just like a bird would.
LIZ HAYES: And is there anything that would stop you?
JEB CORLISS: Being dead!
LIZ HAYES: And in this sport as you'll see, being dead can happen anytime.
JEB CORLISS: We're all going to die. The question is are you going to live while you're here?
LIZ HAYES: At 32, Jeb Corliss has already cut his teeth doing some of the most radical base jumps ever attempted. But now it's all about staying up there and that means climbing into a wingsuit. You should really be only coming out at dusk. It is really very 'bat-like' isn't it ?
JEB CORLISS: It really is more a flying-squirrel like we're really kinda gliding which is a slightly different concept.
LIZ HAYES: How does it work ?
JEB CORLISS: Well, basically what happens is, as the air goes into these it actually fills up these ribs with air. As you move your arms and legs, you can actually change the shape of your wing which changes the way you fly.
LIZ HAYES: And the way Jeb Corliss likes to fly, it's nothing if not spectacular!
JEB CORLISS: When I was at the Christ statue, I was flying 5 feet over people's heads, About 10 feet from the actual statue itself. As I came over the heads and over the railing I'd take a right-hand turn and be skimming across trees by three or four feet.
LIZ HAYES: And right at the cutting-edge of this brave new world are a couple of intrepid Australians.
HEATHER SWAN: I was the archetypal 'wha-fo' LIZ HAYES: Which is?
HEATHER SWAN: A 'wha-fo' is a non-skydiver. Why for you jump out of a perfectly good plane?
LIZ HAYES: Up until she was 38, Heather Swan was perfectly happy with her life.
HEATHER SWAN: All I wanted to do was to be successful in my corporate career and raise beautiful children and do all the things we aspire to in western life.
LIZ HAYES: So what changed?
HEATHER SWAN: Well , I met Glenn.
LIZ HAYES: He pushed you?
HEATHER SWAN: He pushed! No, he made me remember the dream The dream that I had quite vividly as a kid.
LIZ HAYES: Now, she and her doctor husband Glenn Singleman have turned their dreams into an all-consuming passion.
GLENN SINGLEMAN: Well, I think that if more people got involved in adventure sports and more people got the level of satisfaction that Heather and I get out of this stuff there would be a lot less people on anti-depressants.
LIZ HAYES: Humans have only been able to fly like this in the last 10 years. Although the man who invented these wingsuits had been toying with the idea since he was nine years old.
ROBERT PECNIK: I was too young to start jumping out of something and I was not really ready to jump with an umbrella from the roof to injure myself. I chose my hampster who will be the jumper instead of me, LIZ HAYES: Yes! You heard it right. Robert Pecnik used his pet hampster as, well, a guinea pig.
ROBERT PECNIK: I developed a parachute on a scale so that it fits my hampster and made a harness for him.
LIZ HAYES: So, the hampster took a dive from the eighth floor?
ROBERT PECNIK: He was a real base jumper.
LIZ HAYES: The hapmster lived?
ROBERT PECNIK: Exactly... but then...
LIZ HAYES: That's an important part of the story - the hampster lived!
ROBERT PECNIK: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was all good!
LIZ HAYES: As far as I'm concerned, the hampster has a lot to answer for. Turns out, for those who like to fly off cliff tops there's no such thing as a free launch. First, you've got to trek. In this case - three hours in knee-deep snow up the side of a mountain in northern Italy. But wow! When you reach the top, all is forgiven.
ROBERT PECNIK: No matter how much or how hard the hike is it's always worth it.
LIZ HAYES: Today, Robert is the guinea pig. Testing the latest model of one of his 'Phoenix' wingsuits.
ROBERT PECNIK: We call it pocket-plane, you know. Just fold it into a bag, come to the mountain, put it on.
LIZ HAYES: All done! Both Robert and his off-sider James Boole have done this jump hundreds of times before. but every time they know that this one could be the last.
JAMES BOOLE: Fear is good because it gives you respect. And if you don't respect it, you'll do silly things. Just getting to the jump-off point scares the hell out of me. The cliff is icy and treacherous. So the tricky part today is to make sure you jump off, not fall off!
JAMES BOOLE: Ready when you're ready.
ROBERT PECNIK: Ready! Set. Go.
JAMES BOOLE: Once you finally commit and make the decision to jump then the fear goes away. It's like one of those things to actually take the leap then you take a deep breath and you're doing it. So the fear subsides and you begin to enjoy it.
LIZ HAYES: And then what do you feel?
JAMES BOOLE: Joy. Quite simply, joy. You're flying! The best part is you're hanging by your arms, you're hanging by your legs. You're flying like a bird. It really is that sensation, the one you dream of.
LIZ HAYES: Of course, flying at fingertip distance from cliffs and waiting for the last possible moment to open your parachute can be hazardous to your health! At least four Australian wingsuiters have been killed in the last six years.
JEB CORLISS: It's about trying to eliminate as many of the variables as you possibly can to make it as safe as you possibly can and for me, I'll say this and you won't believe it, no one ever does but it's true, I genuinely trust my parachute system more than I trust most elevator systems.
LIZ HAYES: That is from a man whose tangle with a waterfall left him with his back broken in three places and who has watched one of his best friends die, horribly!
VIDEO FOOTAGE: Give us a kind of wind direction.
JEB CORLISS: It's 3,000 feet above the bridge.
LIZ HAYES: It was October 5th, 2003 at the 'Go-Fast Games' in Colorado. Jeb Corliss had teamed with Australian Dwayne Weston for a demonstration flight.
JEB CORLISS: Dwayne was the greatest base jumper that ever lived. Even to this point there's not even a close 2nd to what he was.
LIZ HAYES: But on this day, Dwayne would be flying a wingsuit. Something he was new to.
JEB CORLISS: So we were in the plane and just before we jump out, he grabs me by my hand and says "Hey Jeb , just remember, whatever happens, happens." I just kinds looked at him and said, "Hey, duh. I mean really, that's a weird thing to say. "Why would you even say that to me?" It's, like, bizarre, you know. So I jumped out of the aircraft I was flying under the bridge and he was flying over the bridge.
VIDEO FOOTAGE: "Oh no! Oh no!"
JEB CORLISS: And all of a sudden I see his parachute deploying like, in my face. I had to just avoid him, so I turned to miss him and as I swerved to avoid hitting him all of a sudden there's other stuff floating in the sky. Then all of a sudden I look up and I see his canopy hit the cliff and I'm like, oh wow, he just had a cliff strike. And then there was actually a woman sitting on the railroad tracks looking at me and she says "
No Jeb, he didn't have a cliff strike. He hit the bridge. and he's dead."
LIZ HAYES: The young Australian died instantly. Do you know what went wrong?
JEB CORLISS: Yeah I do. I do know went wrong. He wanted to go over the railing by about 5 feet or something.
JEB CORLISS: So he wanted to do something spectacular?
JEB CORLISS: He wanted to be close. But, 5 feet? I mean come on, that's just unrealistic.
I-FLY OPERATOR: With the goggles, we want to make sure they're nice and snug.
LIZ HAYES: But you don't have to risk your life to find out what it's like to fly. At the I-Fly wind tunnel in Hollywood scaredy-cats like me get to experience the sensation of flight without the risk of death. It IS an unbelievable feeling. I think I've discovered why Glenn Singleman and Heather Swann keep pushing the boundaries. This power-couple have already claimed the world record for the highest wingsuit base jump.
GLENN SINGLEMAN: Ready, set, go!
LIZ HAYES: Now they're planning to take another record. This one, even more dangerous. Jumping from a balloon on the edge of space.
GLENN SINGLEMAN: We want to fly further than anyone has ever flown in a wingsuit. We plan to fly 30km after we get out of the balloon at 40,000 feet. And that will take about seven minutes and during that time we will be crossing the ground at speeds over 400km/h.
LIZ HAYES: So these are all the necessary things for a world record?
GLENN SINGLEMAN: Just some of the toys you need if you're going to set a distance wingsuit flight. We jump with these bottles. This is 11 minutes worth of oxygen. And we've got seven minutes. So if we don't get it right, we'll be unconscious very quickly.
LIZ HAYES: Their world record attempt is still four months away. But every day spent training is one more investment in life insurance.
GLENN SINGLEMAN: What we want to to in the big jump is fly right next to each other for the whole seven minutes and that's quite a skill to be literally fingertip to fingertip going at 200km/h.
LIZ HAYES: It's not difficult for the rest of us to imagine the euphoria of flight. It will always be a sport that appeals to the brave and the thrillseekers. Those who thrive on challenging their fears. But whatever you do, just don't call them crazy.
JEB CORLISS: Well, you wanna know what I think is crazy? I think waking up at 6:00am, eating breakfast and getting in a car and sitting in traffic for 1.5 hours on your way to a job where you then sit in a box for eight hours, get a 30 minute break to eat some lunch get back in that car and sit in traffic for another 1.5 hours on your way home where you eat dinner and watch the TV then go to sleep. Repeat that until you're about 60, you retire, and then you die! I think that is absolutely insane!
