World Air Games In Dubai This Week

The World Air Games are underway this week in Dubai, featuring competitions in aerobatics, skydiving, hot-air ballooning, aeromodelling and several other airborne sports. A new world record was set today by the Golden Knights U.S. Army parachute team for an eight-way formation. The team executed 33 formations in 50 seconds, breaking their own record set two months ago. The games, which are organized by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, aim to showcase air sports to the public and attract new participants. The events also feature a number of less well-known air sports, such as a race for hot-air airships, a spot-landing competition for paragliders, and control-line aeromodel combat racing. The games continue through Saturday.

The rest of the week will feature competitions with microlights (both trikes and gyrocopters), rotorcraft, hot-air balloons, skydiving, helicopters and more. The final event, on Saturday, will be a freestyle competition among remote-control helicopters. The games were last held in Italy, in 2009. More videos from the event are posted at the FAI channel.