A 99-year-old woman named Helga Duffy has set a world record by standing on the wing of a plane in flight. The feat is known as a wing walk, and she is now the oldest woman in the world to have completed one. It has put her name in Guinness World Records and raised money for the Wiltshire and Bath Air Ambulance.
The BBC reported that Helga completed the flight at RFC Rendcomb airfield near Cirencester in Gloucestershire, England. Guinness World Records officials presented her with a certificate. The eldest of seven siblings, Helga said her father would surely have been proud of the achievement had he been alive.
She was inspired after watching 97-year-old Betty Bromage take on the same challenge, and from then on wanted to fly standing on a plane’s wing. Helga said her father always expected the best of his children and that she had always tried to live up to that. She believes he would have been proud of his first child. Her two nieces, Jackie Rose and Julie Preece, came to watch. In their words, Helga is an independent and outspoken woman.
Jackie said Helga had long wanted to do something different, and wanted to show everyone that at 99 she was the same person she had been many years ago. The nieces said the flight had moved them too.
The charity she is raising money for, the Wiltshire and Bath Air Ambulance, carried their mother on her final journey. Sam Conway, a representative of the charity, praised Helga’s courage and called her a legend. Her feat, the report said, is a rare example of age being no bar to courage or to trying something new.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report