Most people celebrating their 99th birthday would consider a restaurant reservation sufficient excitement. Helga Duffy preferred a reservation on the outside of an airplane.
The German-born British resident has become the world’s oldest female wing walker, taking to the skies at RFC Rendcomb Airfield in Gloucestershire, England, while raising money for Wiltshire and Bath Air Ambulance. A Guinness World Records adjudicator attended to verify the achievement.
Wing walking involves being secured in a specialist harness outside an aircraft, typically on its upper wing, while a pilot handles the flying. The passenger gets the scenery, the wind and absolutely no opportunity to complain about insufficient legroom.
Duffy said the experience felt peculiar, but fear apparently failed to secure a booking.
“I wasn’t frightened because I was so excited,” she told the BBC, according to published reporting.
Her inspiration was another woman who had already demonstrated that retirement need not involve staying indoors. Elizabeth “Betty” Bromage made headlines by wing walking at 97, prompting Duffy to pursue the challenge herself.
The flight was intended as a 99th-birthday celebration, although the original birthday booking was postponed. When she eventually flew, the outing raised more than £1,300 for the air ambulance charity.
There was a personal reason behind that choice. Duffy’s nieces, who watched her flight, said their mother had made her final journey in an air ambulance. The record attempt offered a way to support a service with meaning for the family.
Bromage, meanwhile, is hardly an accidental participant in this unusual competition. Guinness reported that she began wing walking at 87 and later added a loop-the-loop to her accomplishments at 97. She has also tried abseiling and a zip wire.
Apparently, there is a very competitive division of retirement that the rest of us weren’t told about.
After Duffy’s achievement, Bromage offered congratulations — along with notice that the title might not remain hers indefinitely. She indicated she wanted another attempt when she turned 100.
For now, Duffy has the record, a successful charity fundraiser and a birthday story that makes everyone else’s dinner-and-cake plans sound a little underambitious.
