Monitoring Desk
DUBAI: Polish pilot Lukasz Czepiela Tuesday created aviation history by landing a plane on the helipad of Dubai’s famed Burj Al Arab Jumeirah hotel.
Czepiela was able to land his light aircraft on a platform barely 27 metres (89 feet) wide and 212 metres (696 feet) above the earth on top of the 56-story skyscraper.
He said the main problem was the lack of any external points of reference which are often present at an airport with hundreds of metres of runway.
The pilot won the 2018 Red Bull Air Race world championship challenger class by landing an aircraft on a wooden pier in Sopot, Poland.
Czepiela joins a select club of sporting legends who have frequented the sail-shaped hotel’s helipad, including tennis champions Roger Federer and Andre Agassi, who played a match there in 2005, and former Formula One Grand Prix winner David Coulthard, who performed donuts there in 2013.
