Red Bull has become synonymous with insane stunts. It doesn't matter the action sports discipline. It doesn't matter the traditional sports discipline. Hell, it doesn't even have to be a sports discipline to begin with. If there's a human on the face of the earth who wants to do something properly insane, Red Bull will absolutely sponsor you to do it.
The only caveats? There have to be multiple cameras shooting the whole thing, and all the Red Bull logos you can fit into frame.
And over the years, it feels like Red Bull's athletes have pushed envelopes well past their natural lunacy to a point where we cannot even fathom what they'll come up with next. I mean, the infamous Happy Days jumping the shark is probably on someone's list somewhere, and that was supposed to be stupidly out there. Yet, the brand's latest comes pretty close to Fonzi's escapades, as not one but two Sea-Doo Spark PWCs were thrown out of an airplane with parachutes, followed by two sky divers who then glided their way onto the machines at speed.
Red Bull gives you wings? No, Red Bull gives you insanity.
The stunt was performed by famed sky diver Luke Aikins, the man who set the world record for the highest sky dive without a parachute a number of years ago. The man fell 25,000 feet into a net and didn't die (obviously). But whereas to complete that stunt, all you really needed was some chutzpah and a big-ass net, Aikins and his Red Bull-sponsored team had to plan a few other things to ensure this whole thing worked, as PWCs aren't exactly the easiet things to drop out of planes.
According to Aikins' accompaning video behind the scenes, "We pushed this jet ski out of this plane, but it wasn't that easy. The first step was finding a plane big enough to hold two jet skis. We made a rail system with wheels [so it could be pushed out of the plane with little rolling resistance]. We put a parachute onto the jet ski, holding it down with some straps. We hooked up a five meter static line to the parachute so when it goes out the door, it doesn't open too soon or too late. And we need them to land in the right spot, so we had to wait for the green light before we pushed the skis out."
He added, "Now the fun part," which went into part of the video of the jet skis getting yeeted out of the back of the plane, followed by the sky divers. And from one of the camera angles outside the plane, it looked like it almost went wrong with the jet ski catching like a sail and pushing it pretty close to the plane's tail section.
But, woof, Red Bull still has it in terms of finding creative ways to market its energy drinks, that's for sure. Insane ways. Properly insane ways.
