Angelo d'Arrigo
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Angelo d'Arrigo (born April 3 1961 in Paris; died March 26, 2006) was an Italian aviator who held a number of world records in the field of flight, principally with microlights and hang gliders, with or without motors.
In 2001 he initiated a sequence of breath-taking events which saw him flying alongside various birds of prey as he attempted to learn from them their techniques for migratory flight by taking advantage of thermal air currents for long distance flight with low energy consumption.
In 2002 he crossed the Sahara and the Mediterranean with an eagle.
In 2003 he flew 5,500 kilometres from northern Siberia to the Caspian Sea in Iran in the company of a flock of Siberian Cranes who had been born in captivity and considered him their parent: the bird is at risk of extinction and in order to try to save the species, Russian ornithologists hatched this plan: have the eggs incubated under Angelo's hang-glider, so the chicks saw this as they hatched. Have Angelo be with the chicks as they fledge. And when they were ready to fly, have them fly alongside Angelo so they would consider him their mentor. That way, he could show them the traditional migratory route for their species. They had no other way to learn it. This approach was similar to the one taken in the movie Fly Away Home.
In 2004 he flew over Mount Everest with a Nepalese eagle, another world record. In 2006 he followed the migratory routes of the condor, over the Aconcagua mountains in the Andean Cordillera, the highest mountain in the Americas.
In March 2006, he died in an accident during an air-show in Comiso, Italy, at the age of 44. A small Sky Arrow plane, in which he was a passenger, fell 200 meters to the ground.
External links
it:Angelo d'Arrigo ja:アンジェロ・ダリーゴ scn:Angilu d'Arrigu sk:Angelo d'Arrigo