The French stuntman Vincent Reffet was killed during training in the Dubai desert. Exactly what went wrong has not been revealed.

The 36-year-old ‘jetman’ was known worldwide for his extreme stunts in the air. In 2015 he flew together with the Swiss Yves Rossy with wings and engines attached right next to an Airbus A380.

Reffet, son of skydivers, had previously made a name for himself as a base jumper. He jumped from the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. He also jumped from a mountain once and then floated into the doorway of a small aeroplane.

Reffet lived in Dubai and was part of Jetman Dubai. That is a team of extreme sportsmen who fly through the air with wings on their backs and aided by four engines. This allows them to reach speeds of up to 400 kilometres per hour, up to an altitude of over 6000 metres. “With this machine I can fly like a bird,” he once said to the American news agency AP.

Photo Rob Vogelaar