Skydiving from one plane to another -- at 14,000 feet? Wild feat of mid-air plane swap has been decades in the making

By Jonathan Hawkins, CNN Video by Amy Li, CNN

Updated 1357 GMT (2157 HKT) March 16, 2022

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San Luis Obispo, California (CNN)Sometimes, the most mundane sounding sentences presage something anything but ordinary: «All right, seatbelt is on tight? Here we go,» skydiver Luke Aikins smiles from the pilot's seat of his Cessna 182. «Brake coming down. Power off. Autopilot engaged.»

The plane slows abruptly, then pitches down, steeper, then steeper still, settling into the most precipitous of dives, pointed directly at the ocean below. To the left of us, the door of the little Cessna has been removed. The wind rages past as the Pacific coast pulls ever closer into view.Aikins