The MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Department's Daedalus is a class of three human-powered aircraft[1] that included Daedalus 88 – which, on 23 April 1988, flew a distance of 115.11 kilometres (71.53 mi) in 3 hours, 54 minutes, from Heraklion on the island of Crete to the island of Santorini.

[3][4] The team members composing the Daedalus project went on to make notable contributions to experimental aeronautics such as founding the Aurora Flight Sciences company.

[2] During flight testing, Daedalus 87 was damaged in a crash caused by spiral divergence, with the rudder not able to supply enough control authority to recover from a disturbance-initiated right turn.

Mark Drela had recently written the program XFOIL, which enables the design of aerofoils and accurately predicts performance at a wide range of Reynolds numbers.

[7] The flight began at the main airport of Iraklion, on Crete, with a horizontal launch under the pilot's own power, as governed by FAI rules.

The speed of the flight was helped by a tailwind, but this also made a head-on landing approach to the narrow beach hazardous, especially with crowds of spectators on the sand.

The flight ended in the water (7 meters from Perissa Beach on Santorini, according to the official record), when increasing gusty winds caused a torsional failure of the tail boom.

Lacking control, the airplane then pitched nose-up, and another gust caused a failure of the main wing spar.