Hulu is presenting Red Bull‘s latest death-defying aerial stunt as the exclusive U.S. livestreaming partner. The opportunistic rights pickup shows how Disney is hunting for new head-turning opportunities to help Hulu stand out in the crowded streaming market.
In Red Bull’s Plane Swap event, set for Sunday, April 24, skydivers and pilots Luke Aikins and Andy Farrington — each piloting single-seat Cessna aircrafts to 14,000 feet in the skies over Arizona — will put their planes into a vertical nosedive. They’ll then jump out in midair at 140 mph (leaving the cockpits empty) and attempt to skydive into each other’s planes as they hurtle toward the ground.
The never-before-attempted Plane Swap stunt will be livestreamed on Hulu beginning at 4 p.m. PT on April 24. Hulu is the exclusive streaming partner of Plane Swap in the U.S. (available to all subscribers) and Red Bull TV is the broadcast platform for rest of the world. On Hulu, the event also will be available to watch on-demand starting the next day.
Plane Swap is the latest in a series of live news and sports programing for Hulu’s on-demand subscribers. Past events on the streamer have included Lollapalooza 2021, the New Year’s Eve Ball Drop and 75 live NHL games.
The Plane Swap stunt required the development of a purpose-built airbrake system installed on the aircrafts’ belly, designed to control aerodynamic stability. Aikins and Farrington worked with aeronautical engineer Dr. Paulo Iscold, who served as lead engineer on the project.once engaged, the airbrakes will ensure the planes maintain a relatively controlled terminal velocity in nosedive that closely matches the speed of the skydivers’ descent.
The Plane Swap concept is Aikins’ brainchild, inspired by a photo he saw in an aviation magazine in the ’90s. As a professional skydiver, he’s made more than 21,000 jumps and served as the skydiving consultant on the Red Bull Stratos mission (where Felix Baumgartner jumped from a record-setting altitude of 127,852 feet in 2012). Aikins also performed the first-ever skydive without a parachute on live TV (in 2016) and developed Red Bull Aces, the world’s first wingsuit slalom competition that began in 2014. Farrington, meanwhile, boasts more than 27,000 skydives himself. The two are cousins who live together on a 40-acre property in Washington State.
“Plane Swap is the natural progression and culmination of my life’s work as a professional, both in the air as a pilot and skydiver and on the ground as an innovator,” Aikins said in a statement. “It’s the pinnacle of my career, and my goal is to inspire the world and show that anything is possible.”
Watch the Plane Swap trailer:
(Pictured above: Red Bull’s Luke Aikins and Andy Farrington practice the Plane Swap stunt on March 8)
