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Saturday, August 1, 2009
Oldest wing walker-world record set by Tom
Lackey
DOVER, UK -- 89-year-old Tom Lackey landed
safely at the Duke of York Royal Military School airfield,
near Dover, after wing walking for 45 minutes, in a flight
from Calais to Dover-setting the world record for the Oldest
wing walker. 
Tom has undertaken 19 wing walks in the
past but none compared to the marathon crossing of the Channel.
(enlarge
photo)
“They usually take about ten or 12 minutes but
this was nearly an hour,” he says. “It was pretty uncomfortable
and it was very cold. I was wearing a leather jacket over
a flying suit over layers of clothes underneath but I was
still cold.”
“We flew from Dover to begin with and I
was a passenger and when we got to France their equivalent
of the Red Arrows were there. They wanted to meet me to see
how mad I was."
“ And when we landed at the Duke of York Royal
Military School there were 94,000 people there. I met the
French pilot who was recreating the Bleriot flight and I met
the Prince of Wales Regiment freefall team who wanted me to
take the salute.”
He added: “That was one of the greatest experiences
in my life.”
The Solihull Road resident won a place
in the Guiness Book of Records when he became the oldest man
to complete a loop-the-loop.
Now he has gained a new world record after
being the oldest man to cross the English Channel on the wings
of a plane.
Tom undertook his first wing walk nearly ten
years ago after the death of his wife Isabel – and he has
no plans to put his feet up just yet.
Starting wingwalks at the sprightly
age of 80, Tom has since raised over £1m for various worthy
causes including the Gurkha Welfare Trust and Acorns Children’s
Hospice.
While the pensioner has often sworn that the
next flight will be his last, he shows no signs of slowing
down and was recently voted the Live Younger Personality of
the Year.
He will be aiming to raise cash for
Breakthrough Breast Cancer by giving a series of talks or
to support his efforts click on the www.justgiving.com/wingwalking
site.
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Saturday,
August 1, 2009
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