Flying Dagger Stunt: Winged Stuntman Successfully Flies Though Narrow Mountain Pass

The flying dagger stunt almost never happened.

Jeb Corliss, a 37-year-old stuntman from New Mexico, had planned to jump from a helicopter in China’s Zhejjang Province and speed through sharp mountain cliffs in a wing suit, but bad weather almost forced him and his team to scrap the stunt.

The wind was moving at about 10 miles per hour through the mountains, and the stunt required such precision that there could be no wind at all.

But then, when Corliss went up in a helicopter to check out the weather one more time, he found that the wind had stopped.

So the stunt was back on, one that required him to fly through a crack that was only 15 feet wide. Jeb Corliss jumped from the helicopter and completed the stunt, flying through the crack at 122 miles per hour.

“The moment I get out of the helicopter is fear,” he said. “When I am totally terrified, my brain focuses completely…. I can feel the air touching my skin.”

Corliss became the first person ever to executive the flying dagger stunt, and it came without a lot of preparation. He spent months simulating his descent out of the helicopter.

Despite all the practice, Corliss said he was still filled with anxiety when it came time to execute the stunt.

“All of a sudden the feat gripped me hard, and I started getting really scared, and it became so overwhelming I started crying” he said. “I’m like, ‘Dude, this is bad, something bad is going to happen, and I was gripped with fear.”

Jeb Corliss is the biggest star of the emerging arena of wingsuit flight (there is even a newly formed World Wingsuit League). But even he has had some near misses, including a miscue while training in South Africa last year that almost killed him. He slammed into a granite mountainside at more than 120 miles per hour, yet somehow survived without major injury.

Corliss said he was so emotional after completing flying dagger stunt that he broke down crying.