DOVER, UK – 89-year-old Tom Lackey landed safely at the Duke of York Royal Military School airfield, near Dover, after wing walking for 45 minutes, in a flight from Calais to Dover-setting the world record for the Oldest wing walker. 
Tom has undertaken 19 wing walks in the past but none compared to the marathon crossing of the Channel.
“They usually take about ten or 12 minutes but this was nearly an hour,” he says. “It was pretty uncomfortable and it was very cold. I was wearing a leather jacket over a flying suit over layers of clothes underneath but I was still cold.”
“We flew from Dover to begin with and I was a passenger and when we got to France their equivalent of the Red Arrows were there. They wanted to meet me to see how mad I was.”
“ And when we landed at the Duke of York Royal Military School there were 94,000 people there. I met the French pilot who was recreating the Bleriot flight and I met the Prince of Wales Regiment freefall team who wanted me to take the salute.”
He added: “That was one of the greatest experiences in my life.”
The Solihull Road resident won a place in the Guiness Book of Records when he became the oldest man to complete a loop-the-loop.
Now he has gained a new world record after being the oldest man to cross the English Channel on the wings of a plane.
Tom undertook his first wing walk nearly ten years ago after the death of his wife Isabel – and he has no plans to put his feet up just yet.
Starting wingwalks at the sprightly age of 80, Tom has since raised over £1m for various worthy causes including the Gurkha Welfare Trust and Acorns Children’s Hospice. While the pensioner has often sworn that the next flight will be his last, he shows no signs of slowing down and was recently voted the Live Younger Personality of the Year.
He will be aiming to raise cash for Breakthrough Breast Cancer by giving a series of talks or to support his efforts click on the www.justgiving.com/wingwalking site.
This article can be found here, on the Guiness Book of World Records Homepage.
