Apple recently received some free advertising from an iPhone 13 Pro Max user who dropped his handheld while skydiving at 14,000 feet, only to find it in perfect working order on the ground.

Last month, Casey Flay, an engineer and skydiving enthusiast from Devon, in the UK, jumped out of an airplane at 14,000 feet (4,267 meters) without closing one of the front pockets on his wingsuit, which caused his iPhone 13 Pro Max to fall out almost immediately after leaving the airplane. The GoPro camera on his helmet captured the moment on video, but before checking the footage, he was convinced he had left the phone on the plane. It was only after searching for it that he decided to use the Find My iPhone app to learn that his handheld was located about 4 miles from where he had landed. But the most shocking thing of all was that the phone still worked.

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Speed skydiving is an extreme sport that requires practicians to jump out of an airplane and try to reach and maintain the highest possible terminal velocity.

Invented in the late 1990s, speed skydiving is recognized as the fastest non-motorized sport on Earth. Competitions begin with skydivers jumping out of an airplane between 13,000ft and 14,000ft (3,962m to 4,267m), then turning 90° from the direction in which the aircraft is traveling, alternately left and right. Next, competitors go into free fall head-first towards the earth, while trying to be as aerodynamic as possible. It is within this stage that they reach the highest speeds. Depending on a variety of factors, including body mass, orientation, and weather conditions, competitors can reach speeds of over 500 km/h (310 mph).

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In his most insane stunt yet, professional skydiver Luke Aikins will jump out of an airplane flying at 25,000 feet without a parachute or wingsuit in an attempt to land on a special net designed to break his fall. No one has ever attempted anything like this. If he makes, it, Aikins will become a living legend, if he doesn’t…

Aikins, who has spent much of his life in the air and has over 18,000 parachute jumps under his belt, was approached about doing this extreme jump a couple of years ago by a couple of Hollywood guys looking to produce the all-time-greatest reality TV stunt. “You won’t believe these guys, they want me to jump out without a parachute,” he remembers telling his wife at the time. She said “Oh, with a wingsuit,” to which he replied “No, they want me to do it with nothing.” They had a good laugh about the preposterous proposition, but in the weeks that followed, Luke just could stop thinking about it. Could anybody actually perform such a stunt and live to tell the tale?

If anyone could, it would have to be Aikins. He made his first tandem jump when he was 12, followed by his first solo jump four years later. he’s never really stopped since, performing about 800 leaps a year. He has taught skydiving, performed all kinds of complex stunts and routines, but even when his parachute got tangled with that of another diver, he could always rely on his backup chute. That only happened about 30 times out of 18,000, but this time he would have no backup to turn to. “If I wasn’t nervous I would be stupid,” he says. “We’re talking about jumping without a parachute, and I take that very seriously. It’s not a joke.”

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