Austrian glides across Channel

An extreme sports fanatic was celebrating today after he successfully flew the English Channel using a carbon fibre 'wing'.

Felix Baumgartner jumped from a plane 10,000m high above Dover and into freezing air temperatures to become the first man to cross the Channel in an unpowered flight.

The flight took six minutes and 22 seconds, with crowds, including journalists from across Europe, on hand to greet him as he landed near Calais.

Within minutes of touching down he was smiling and posing for photographers.

He said cloud cover meant he could not see where he was going and had to follow his two planes across the Channel.

"For the last 2,000m I could see the other side and I knew I was going to make it," he said.

The 34-year-old Austrian began the flight at a speed of about 220 miles per hour before slowing to about 135 miles an hour.

Baumgartner made a crunching parachute landing at Cap Blanc-Nez, near Calais, in France.

He glided 22 miles across the Channel wearing a specially-adapted suit with the carbon fibre wing attached to his back.

Sarah Christofi, spokeswoman for the event sponsors Red Bull, said: "Everything went well and it was a success. There was a little bit of a problem with the parachute when he was

descending."

She added: "He is absolutely fine but one person in the plane came close to passing out because of the lack of oxygen."

The plane went beyond the expected altitude of 9,000m because weather conditions allowed it, she added.

She said: "Felix is feeling pretty good and he is pretty happy.

"He says he's got things in the pipeline, which includes a wing, and will be bigger and better."

While in the air, Baumgartner had to hold the

wing slightly in order to maintain direction.

She added: "It was a huge crowd here. There were a lot of journalists from all over Europe.

Everyone got to see him as he came down."

His new wing had a span of 1.8 metres - making it 10 centimetres bigger than his previous one, with which he won a race against an aeroplane some weeks ago in the United States.

  • Baumgartner was the first man to parachute from the world's tallest building, Malaysia's Petronas Towers, as well as the statue of Christ in the Brazilian city Rio de Janeiro.

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