Wingsuit flying
variant of skydiving activity involving a specially designed suit which offers control surfaces
Wingsuit flying, also called wingsuiting, is flight in free fall using a specialized suit with fabric wings between the arms and torso and between the legs. The added surface area reduces vertical speed and increases horizontal speed, producing a controllable glide while restricting part of the jumper's normal range of motion.
A wingsuit flight may begin from an aircraft or from a fixed BASE object and normally ends with parachute deployment. Aircraft and fixed-object flights use different exit procedures, equipment and training.
The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) recognizes wingsuit performance flying and acrobatic flying as international competition disciplines. Performance flying measures time, horizontal distance and horizontal speed, while acrobatic teams perform compulsory and free routines for judging from a camera flyer's footage.
History
On 4 February 1912, tailor Franz Reichelt jumped from the Eiffel Tower while testing a wearable parachute suit. The canopy did not open and he was killed on impact.
In 1930, American parachutist Rex G. Finney demonstrated fabric wings intended to increase horizontal movement and maneuverability during a parachute jump. Contemporary magazine reports described his equipment and later demonstrations as a "human glider".
“Wingsuit flying” enters the record as variant of skydiving activity involving a specially designed suit which offers control surfaces. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Wingsuit, flying and variant can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q592031. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1912 and 1930.
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This entry incorporates text from “Wingsuit flying” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.