HackerTubewatch
Surprise me
Frame from Gary Connery's Wingsuit Landing without using a Parachute Plays via YouTube's privacy-enhanced embed

Gary Connery's Wingsuit Landing without using a Parachute

Gary Connery
Demos
YouTube
Cited on HN 3 times, 2015–2022, never outright recommended score 0
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Cited as an example of how padding can allow survival of very high-speed impacts.

Stuntman Gary Connery jumps from a helicopter at 2,400 feet in a wingsuit and lands without a parachute on a runway of stacked cardboard boxes, the first such landing.

“jumped from a helicopter at 2,400 feet (730 metres) and steered himself using a wingsuit onto a runway of vertically stacked cardboard boxes.” (HN, 2019)

3 citations · Demos

3 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@Jach May 2015 Cites it
on HN thread John Nash Has Died
These are both pretty terrible arguments, due to [link] Cars have crumple zones for a reason. This is not to say seat belts aren't good, as they along with air bags contribute to impulse, but there's a huge difference between shooting an egg (or person) at a brick wall at 50 mph while naked, vs. encasing it in sufficient amounts of bubble wrap first. I'll gladly sprint into a tree, or ram a bike into a wall, at such speeds provide I or the tree/wall are sufficiently padded. ( [this video] )
Example of padding allowing survival of high-speed impact.
@oska Jul 2019 Cites it
on HN thread Unplanned Freefall? Some Survival Tips (2001)
Stuntman Garry Connery demonstrated the efficacy of what you're describing when he jumped from a helicopter at 2,400 feet (730 metres) and steered himself using a wingsuit onto a runway of vertically stacked cardboard boxes. [1] [1] [this video] > At approximately 200 feet (61 m) over the landing strip, he changed the configuration of his wingsuit so as to decrease the gliding and vertical (falling) components of his velocity to 50 mph (80 km/h) and 15 mph (24 km/h) respectively. [2] [2] [link]
Wingsuit landing onto stacked cardboard boxes without a parachute.
@fauria Oct 2022 Cites it
on HN thread I Fell 15,000 Feet and Lived (2009)
Related to this, in 2012 Gary Connery [1] landed a wingsuit over cardboard boxes [2], and in 2016 Luke Aikins [3] jumped from 25000 feet (~7600 metres) without a parachute, landing into a giant net that absorbed the impact [4]. There has been issues of BASE jumpers accidentally landing wingsuits without deploying a parachute too (can't find any reference online at the moment). [1] - [link] [2] - [this video] [3] - [link] [4] - [link]
Wingsuit landing over cardboard boxes in 2012.

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

Keyboard shortcuts

/
Search
j k
Next / previous video
r
Surprise me
l
Like (video page)
w
Watch later (video page)
?
This help
Esc
Close