Yves Rossy, widely known around the world as “Jetman,” is a Swiss aviator and inventor who turned the science fiction dream of personal jetpack flight into reality. Before strapping engines to his back, Rossy had a distinguished career in traditional aviation, serving as a fighter pilot in the Swiss Air Force where he flew jets like the Dassault Mirage III, and later piloting Boeing 747s for commercial airlines. Driven by a desire to fly as freely as a bird, he spent years developing a custom-built wingsuit system. The result was a backpack equipped with a 7.9-foot semi-rigid carbon-fiber wing, powered by four modified model-aircraft jet engines.

Using this revolutionary suit, Rossy has completed some mind-bending aerial feats since his first successful sustained horizontal flight in 2006. He made history in 2008 by becoming the first person to cross the English Channel using a jet-propelled wing, completing the journey in just 13 minutes. Over the years, he has soared over the Grand Canyon, circled Japan’s Mount Fuji, and even flew in tight formation alongside a massive Emirates Airbus A380 passenger plane over the skies of Dubai. Because the suit has no mechanical steering controls, Rossy maneuvers through the air purely by shifting his own body weight, blending human intuition with high-powered engineering.