Height, depth and spaceWorld record
Highest altitude reached by a glider
Record
23.203 km
14.418 mi
- Holder
- Perlan II (Jim Payne and Tim Gardner)
- Year
- Standing since
- 2018 (8 years)
What to remember
The Perlan II glider climbed to 23.203 km, or 76,124 ft. The flight took place on 2 September 2018 from El Calafate, as part of the Airbus Perlan Mission II, with Jim Payne and Tim Gardner at the controls.
The figure matters beyond gliding. It surpassed the 22.475 km (73,737 ft) reached by Jerry Hoyt on 17 April 1989 in a Lockheed U-2, which made the Perlan II flight the highest subsonic flight. The programme had used El Calafate before, and once again the Perlan II took off from there.
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Sources and licences
- Value, holder and date: Wikipedia article “List of flight altitude records” (revision used 1378383058). Data from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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