Longest tunnel flight world record broken in Turkey

Italian pilot Dario Costa flies through the Catalca Tunnel in Istanbul, Turkey. He set a new world record for the longest plane flight through a tunnel - at 1,610 metres. EPA

Italian stunt pilot Dario Costa didn’t seek the heights Saturday but the depth of a tunnel.

By flying through the two tunnels on the Northern Marmara Highway in Istanbul’s Çatalca district he broke the world record of longest tunnel flight by plane.

His flight through the tunnels T1 and T2 lasted for a total of 43.44 seconds. The daring pilot soared staggeringly low with merely a meter (3.28 feet) above the ground and had only 4 meters on either side of his specially made plane. The whole length of the flight was 1,610 meters.

VIDEO — Italian pilot Dario Costa breaks world record for longest tunnel flight by plane in Turkey’s Northern Marmara Highway in Çatalcapic.twitter.com/XgxtBQED6u

— DAILY SABAH (@DailySabah) September 4, 2021

 

He passed through the two tunnels at an average speed of 245 km/s.

The tricky part of the record attempt was the open space between the tunnels, usually hitting with hard winds, but Costa mastered that challenge and celebrated the occasion by doing a loop after his success.