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Swiss pilot thrills EAA AirVenture show by soaring with jet pack

Yves “Jetman” Rossy takes a practice flight Monday from the Fond du Lac airport using the jet pack he invented. Rossy, 54, a Swiss pilot, demonstrated his daring invention Tuesday at EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh.

Mike Shore / Courtesy of Breitling


Oshkosh — Not since "The Jetsons" or Sean Connery in "Thunderball" have humans flown with a jet pack on their back.

The idea has sparked the imaginations of comic book artists, cartoonists and filmmakers. But Yves Rossy has figured out a way to soar above ground with tiny jet engines strapped to his back, and he's not a figment of anyone's imagination.

Dubbed "Jetman," Rossy made his first public performance in the United States on Tuesday during the afternoon airshow at EAA AirVenture. As thousands of spectators leaned back and clicked cameras, Rossy jumped out of a helicopter with his 6-foot carbon-fiber wing armed with four 45-pound-thrust JetCat engines strapped to his back.

Firing up the engines, he began swooping, diving and twirling like an aerobatic plane, which in effect he was, though with a decidedly flesh- and-bone-constructed fuselage. Then when his fuel was spent, he pulled a parachute ripcord and floated down to the ground. Unlike a plane, Rossy has no instruments aside from a watch and altimeter since he carries eight to 10 minutes of fuel. He also has no aerodynamic controls like ailerons, elevators or rudder.

Rossy literally flies by the seat of his pants, or actually his flight suit. He uses his body to control the jet pack, arching his back when he wants to pitch upward, moving his shoulders to roll or tilting his head to turn right or left. At 6 feet tall and 150 pounds, Rossy weighs 330 pounds when strapped into his jet pack.

"Before the Wright Brothers, so many guys tried to fly, and they were inspired by birds," said Rossy, 53, a Swiss pilot and skydiver. "They had wings in different shapes. They wear the body of the bird, and they wanted to flap their wings like a bird. Actually I'm between a bird and an airplane with a flexible fuselage. Like a bird with a fixed wing."

He's flown across the English Channel, over the Grand Canyon, across the Strait of Gibraltar and in formation with jet planes. But he admitted Tuesday evening that flying at Oshkosh, which he called "the Super Bowl of aviation," was a thrill.

"I hope you had as much fun as I had. It was really fun to fly through the clouds like that," said Rossy, whom the FAA classified as an experimental aircraft to fly at AirVenture.

Rossy isn't the first to fly with a jet pack. Bell Aircraft Co. designed and built one in the 1960s that was used by Connery, or at least his stand-in, during the filming of "Thunderball" and was flown at the Olympics and the first Super Bowl. But for various reasons jet packs have not yet become universally available to anyone with enough cash and daring to strap one on. They're dangerous, flights are really short, with expensive fuel and complex technology.

Rossy isn't trying to commercialize his design, which costs $100,000 not including a helicopter to take him into the sky. He knows few people in the world will be able to use his jet pack, though he is now instructing his first student, a French skydiver. Someday he hopes to open a school, not for the motorized version of his jet pack but for the glider version.

"It's more a symbol, actually. I don't know what will be the future, but it opens a door. Afterwards the younger guys will decide if they want to continue" the technology, Rossy said.

The idea came to Rossy as he was skydiving in the early 1990s. That feeling of weightlessness, of flying, was so euphoric for Rossy he wished he could prolong it. Not only did he want to spend more time in the air, but he wanted to do more than fall. He wanted to swoop up and around, just like a bird.

It took 18 years for Rossy to become a modern-day Icarus with much trial and error until he figured out his current jet pack configuration. Because he doesn't want to end up like Icarus, who according to Greek mythology flew too close to the sun and fell to Earth when the wax on his wings melted, Rossy built in a parachute so when something goes wrong he can float safely to Earth.

He starts his flight by jumping from a helicopter, plane or balloon because he needs at least 2,500 feet of altitude to deploy his parachute should he run into a problem.

Rossy's helicopter took off from Wittman Regional Airport in Oshkosh shortly before 4 p.m., and when it reached 6,500 feet he fell backward from the strut he stood on. Soon his four jet engines powered up and the crowd oohed as he traversed the sky, looking like a tiny bug. A tiny video camera attached to Rossy's carbon-fiber wing showed on Jumbotrons the view he could see from the sky.

As he floated down at the Oshkosh airport Tuesday after deploying his parachute, the crowd cheered.

"Amazing," said Morris Eckard, of Hickory, N.C. "Never seen anything like it. The pictures don't do it justice."

Added Eckard's wife, Lori: "He's a braver man than I."

Rossy said that's the most common reaction he gets. That he's brave. And nuts.

"But afterwards they see I'm not crazy, I'm really someone who is loving life," Rossy said. "I'm not an adrenaline junkie. I hope they're inspired because almost everybody dreams to fly once in their life and suddenly there is one guy who is doing it for real."

Yves "Jetman" Rossy is scheduled to fly during EAA AirVenture afternoon air shows on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.

© 2015, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved.

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