The air-to-air exchange stunt, developed over 10 years, ended in an accident as one of the planes spun out of control minutes after the pilot left it.
The pilots started the world's first plane-swapping stunt at 5:45 pm local time on Sunday, taking off from a location in Arizona. About an hour into the flight, the pilots put their aircrafts into a vertical dive. At an altitude of 12,100 feet (about 3.7 kilometers), turning on the braking system, they jumped out of their planes.
While Aikins managed to move into his partner's plane, the one he had left a few minutes earlier began to spiral. Farrington had to land with a parachute as his plane, which went into a spin, crashed.
While the pilots and their sponsor, Red Bull company, have yet to figure out what exactly went wrong during the stunt, a federal investigation has been opened into the incident, as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said it denied a request for an exception to safety regulations in order to perform the trick.