Angelo d'Arrigo

Angelo d' Arrigo ( born April 3, 1961 in Catania, † March 26, 2006 in Comiso ) was an Italian paraglider and hang glider pilot and a birder. He became famous for his spectacular flight projects where he accompanied his ultralight aircraft flocks of birds, overcame with the hang glider to the Himalayas, flew over the highest mountain in the Andes ( Aconcagua ) and crossed with an eagle, the Sahara and the Mediterranean.

Life

Angelo d' Arrigo was the son of a French mother and a Sicilian father. As he watched a hang glider at the age of six years, it was clear to him, also to learn how to kite flying. However, before his worried parents, he kept his intention and his flight training hidden until the age of eighteen. He completed a sports studies at the Université du Sport de Paris. He then worked in Catania, Sicily as a ski instructor, mountain guide and teacher for hang gliding and paragliding. With the hang glider he flew higher, further and longer than any other man before. He was twice world champion in extreme flying, he was the winner of many competitions flight. Posthumously, he was awarded the Laureus World Sports Award for Alternative Sportsperson of the Year 2006.

" Metamorphosis "

After a collision against a 20 000 volt high- voltage line he broke through the hard landing a vertebra. He was paralyzed for six months by the pressure on his spinal cord below the hip and did not know if he would ever walk again. This accident changed his attitude to flying: after his medical rehabilitation he tried to imitate the best possible way to the flight of birds by now. This meant the skilful and instinctive exploiting thermals and air currents - without technical aids. He called this new beginning since 2000 programmatically Metamorphosis, the assimilation of people into a bird man. D' Arrigo looked away from the eagles as they track the air currents. To practice in this instinctive flight behavior, he used the extreme wind conditions over the Etna. In 2001 he made together with the eagle Nike spectacular flight across the Sahara and the Mediterranean to Sicily.

D' Arrigo also changed his life goal, he was now focused on increasing his flying skills of the conservation of endangered bird species. He flew in the summer of 2003 in a microlight in front of a flock of wild cranes from the Arctic Circle to the Caspian Sea. He wanted this endangered migratory species show a new trail. In order to characterize to himself, he drew a bird mask over his arm.

A more technical ambition was his replica of the flight model, the Leonardo da Vinci had designed in 1510. In collaboration with an architect and several engineers he used instead of the heavier wood and linen aluminum tubes for the frame and synthetic fiber fabrics for the clothing. A flight test in the wind tunnel confirmed the flight ability of the model.

With the two Nepalese steppe eagles Chumi and Gaijy from the zoos of London and Moscow, he trained for two years at Mount Etna in order to prepare for the overflight of the Himalayan Mountains. Extreme degrees of cold down to -50 ° C, oxygen deficiency, updrafts on Mount Everest and the " Jetstream ", a wind in almost 9000 m altitude up to 200 km / h D' Arrigo was able to successfully defeat in 2004, thanks to meticulous preparation.

In early 2006, he flew into a maximum height of 7400 m Aconcagua, which is the highest mountain in the Americas. Meticulously Angelo has prepared for the challenge. So he took a running session in his home on Etna, with a mask a portion of the oxygen from the air filtered to simulate the height. In addition, it is trained in a special breathing technique, in which the pressure in the lung is increased. Thus he was able to overcome without additional oxygen Aconcagua.

His dream of flight with the Andean condor on the Andes Angelo d' Arrigo could no longer fulfill before his death. His two condors Inca and Maya, which he reared for this purpose, were released in the summer of 2006 by his widow in South America.

Crash

Angelo d' Arrigo died on 26 March 2006 at 11:30 clock at an air show in Comiso in Sicily on a disused airbase.

Together with the former F -104 pilots of the Italian Air Force pilot and demo the company Sky Arrow ( Trieste ), General Giulio De Marchis, he crashed into the two-seat ultralight aircraft Sky Arrow 650 TNT 200 m altitude in an olive grove. The two pilots, who were among the most experienced light aircraft pilots Italy, died on the spot. The prosecution of Ragusa determined to clarify the cause of the accident. D' Arrigo survived by his wife Laura Mancuso, two sons and a daughter.