“Endless Skydive”

Max Manow had a vision—a skydive with no end. Not just another freefall stunt, but something that could rewrite the rulebook of human flight. Over the vast, unforgiving landscape of the Little Colorado River Tribal Park, a rugged arm of Arizona’s Grand Canyon, the German skydiver stepped out of a helicopter and into history. What followed was a feat so audacious it sounds like something conjured up in a fever dream: plummeting towards the earth, latching onto a nosediving plane mid-air, and being towed back up, only to release once more into the void.
The setting was as dramatic as the stunt itself—Hell Hole Bend, a 427-metre-deep canyon with sheer rock walls and no room for mistakes. As the helicopter hovered at 10,000 feet, Manow leapt into the abyss, his wingsuit cutting through the air as he closed the gap on a Cessna 182 in a controlled dive. At the controls was none other than Red Bull Air Force legend Luke Aikins, a man no stranger to pushing limits. The goal? To attach himself to the aircraft, let it tow him back up to altitude, then release again—creating what Manow called his “endless skydive.”

Everything about this attempt was uncharted territory. Connecting to a moving plane in freefall required a level of precision so extreme that even the most seasoned skydivers would hesitate. The airflow alone threatened to send Manow tumbling, the plane’s slipstream behaving unpredictably as he reached out with a specially designed hook. Months of training had led to this moment—sessions in a Stockholm wind tunnel, countless test jumps, and engineering adjustments to ensure the connection was possible. “The first time I grabbed the handle, I realised how difficult it was,” Manow admitted. “The turbulence was insane. I had to rethink everything about the way I fly.”
Once locked onto the aircraft, the physics shifted. Instead of descending, Manow began to climb—500 feet per minute, to be exact—his body stretched out behind the plane like a human banner in the sky. Inside the cockpit, Aikins controlled the airbrake system via a winch, ensuring a stable ascent. Communication was critical; Manow, flat on his back, was completely blind to his surroundings, relying on Aikins’ updates to know when to let go. At 2,500 feet, he disengaged, arcing gracefully back into freefall. Then, the process began again.
“In theory, I could do this forever,” Manow mused. “Just keep reconnecting, keep climbing back up. An endless skydive.” The implications for the sport were huge. This was no mere stunt—it was proof of concept for a new kind of aerial adventure. A way for skydivers to stay airborne indefinitely, revolutionising the possibilities of human flight.
Even for a team accustomed to breaking barriers, this was a logistical beast. The Cessna 182 had to be modified with an airbrake and custom rigging, its tow rope housed in a carbon fibre tube to ensure stability. The helicopter, piloted by Red Bull Air Force’s Aaron Fitzgerald, provided crucial support, while skydiver Marco Fürst captured it all on camera. Every element had to work flawlessly, because in a place like Hell Hole Bend, the margin for error was razor-thin.

Aikins, ever the pragmatist, initially thought Manow’s idea was borderline insane. “He called me and said, ‘Hey, can you tow me behind a plane?’ I thought he might be joking,” Aikins recalled. But after months of testing, tweaking, and refining, they proved it could be done. “What makes this unique is that we’re taking things that weren’t meant to work together—wingsuits and airplanes—and making them part of the same system.”

For Manow, this was more than just another death-defying stunt—it was the opening of a door. “Who knows where this will take the future of the sport?” he said, still buzzing from the flight. And with the footage now out in the wild, it’s only a matter of time before the next evolution in skydiving takes shape.
Want to see it for yourself? Watch Max Manow’s ‘Endless Skydive’ now on YouTube.