CHELTENHAM, England — Betty Bromage strapped herself to the wing of a biplane over Gloucestershire on Aug. 4 and did something she had never done before: a loop-the-loop. At 97 years and 145 days old, she became the oldest woman on record to pull off the maneuver mid-flight, and in the same outing broke the Guinness World Record she already held for oldest female wing walker.
Bromage first claimed that title in 2022, at age 93 years and 145 days, strapped to an open-cockpit plane above an airfield near Cirencester. Her latest flight, four years later and in the same spot, pushed the record further and added the loop-the-loop milestone. A Guinness adjudicator, Emma Salt, presented her with the certificate on the runway afterward.
Bromage took up wing walking relatively late in life. She moved into sheltered housing at 87 and decided the move called for a change of pace rather than a slowdown: she has since gone zip-lining off a mountain in Snowdonia at 90 and tried abseiling. "They think I'm mad," she has said of her family's reaction to her stunts.
You just have to have faith in your pilot.
— Betty Bromage, on performing the loop-the-loop
The flight doubled as a fundraiser for Cheltenham General Hospital's stroke unit, where staff treated Bromage after she suffered a stroke in August 2025. She recovered enough within a year to climb back onto a wing.
"I have to concentrate on the things I can do, not what I can't do," she said. Bromage is already weighing a new challenge for her 100th birthday, joking that people keep telling her she'll make it that far. For now, the loop-the-loop stands as her sixth wing walk and the latest entry in a record she has now broken twice.