1988: A Record-Breaking Flight Takes Place in the Skies Above the Aegean Sea

April 23, 1988

The ancient mythical flight of the craftsman Daedalus, who reportedly took to the skies while flapping wings made of feathers and wax, was recreated by Kanellos Kanellopoulos. The 30-year-old Greek cycling champion accomplished this with a pink-and-silver pedal-plane that had been built by the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 

Kanellopoulos used this light human-powered aircraft, which was called the MIT Daedalus and constructed at that university’s Lincoln Lab Facility outside Boston, to cover a 72.4-mile (115.1-kilometer) stretch of the Aegean Sea between the Greek islands of Crete and Santorini. 

Kanellopoulos’s flight took a total of three hours and 54 minutes from the time he departed Crete’s Heraklion military airfield. He joked that “this is the best way to visit Santorini.” His airborne achievement set a couple of official Fédération Aéronautique Internationale records, including the one for duration of a human-powered flight.

Photo Credit: Public Domain

Additional information on Kanellos Kanellopoulos and his record-breaking flight as pilot of the MIT Daedalus (also known as Daedalus 88) is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanellos_Kanellopoulos