Would you strap yourself to an airplane's wing?
Nine-year-old cousins Rose Brewer and Flame Brewer completed their wingwalk to become the world's youngest formation wingwalkers. A wingwalker is someone who rides on an airplane while standing on the wing. When airplanes fly in formation, they fly together.The girls were strapped to a pair of antique Boeing Stearman biplanes and flown to heights of 500 feet over a private airfield in Cirencester, a town west of London, England.
"We were mostly screaming and waving," said Rose. "And we did a little Superwoman pose."
Flame added that the flight had been, "a little bit scary" but when they'd started to fly it was, "really, really fun."
The girls were inspired by the plight of six-year-old Eli Crossley who suffers from Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. His parents have set up the Duchenne Children's Trust to raise money to research a treatment or cure in time to save Eli's life. The girls raised money for the fund.
“It feels really nice to be doing something to help Eli,” Rose added. “It is dreadful that the older children like Eli get, the less able they become to do things that I take for granted.”
Eli’s mom, Emily Crossley, said she was “honored” that the girls were helping to raise awareness of the disease that is caused by a mistake on the genetic code in a gene called dystrophin.
“For other young children to be moved to help our child and hundreds of thousands of boys like him is very humbling and we wish them all the very best,” she said.
Critical thinking challenge: Why did the girls fly on antique planes instead of jets?
- Posted on August 21, 2013