The Italian professional driver Dario Costa has accomplished a historic feat that allowed him to enter the Guinness Book of World Records.
The flight between the two tunnels
The record was achieved in Turkey by the XNUMX-year-old native of Manchester. Dario Costa flew into the double motorway tunnel of Catalca, naturally closed to traffic for the occasion. It was just after six thirty in the morning - the time chosen to avoid the interference of the sun during operations - when the Italian pilot took to the wheel of his aircraft Zivko Edge 540, modified specifically to attempt the feat.
On 4 September 2021, Dario Costa took off at 6:43 from the first tunnel, always keeping a distance from the ground between seventy centimeters and one meter and sixty. The side one has never exceeded 4 meters from the walls. After leaving the first tunnel, perhaps the most difficult moment, Costa had to resist the movement of air. To do this, he kept the controls steady and slightly changed the trajectory. In doing so, he slipped into the second tunnel. Once inside, he managed to keep a travel speed of 245 kilometers per hour.
After the second gallery, realizing the great feat accomplished, he celebrated by showing one of his specialties: the complete 360 ° tour. The flight covered about 2 kilometers and 200 meters (of which 1730 meters were covered) and lasted just 44 seconds, the time needed to obtain the Guinness World Record certificate.
Actually the entrance into the Guinness World Record only the longest flight through a tunnel allowed him. However, this is not the only record achieved. Costa was the first pilot to take off and then fly inside a tunnel. He was also the only one to fly through two tunnels and the one who traveled the longest distance under an obstacle of solid material.
Who is Dario Costa
Dario Costa has nearly twenty-five years of experience. He has flown more than sixty different models and has about 5000 flight hours, many of them in stunts. Furthermore, he was the first Italian to participate and triumph in a race of the important Red Bull Air Race Challenger Class. His extraordinary feat would not have been possible on the basis of his indisputable aviator skills alone. In fact, he had to count on the support of a team of about forty people, intense and specialized training and even more than a year of work.
The pilot himself immediately seemed very excited, aware of having accomplished one of the greatest feats of Italian aviation and, above all, a personal dream: "I have never flown into a tunnel in my life. Nobody has ever done it, actually. So I had doubts about the actual success, about how this enterprise would go. Making it was a relief, of course, but the main emotion was immense joy. For me it is another dream that becomes reality "
