AN AVIATOR today began a world first attempt to cross the Atlantic ocean dangling from a massive bunch of balloons.
Cluster balloonist Jonathan Trappe, 39, achieved lift-off at 6:20 am (11:20 am GMT) in heavy fog from Caribou, Maine in the United States and is aiming for Europe.
The journey is the first of its kind and a successful crossing will see Trappe fly into the history books as the first person ever to scale the ocean in a flight of this type.
Incredibly, winds could see him land anywhere between Iceland and Morocco after a journey expected to take between three and fives days.
Trappe is relying on state of the art weather data from meteorologist who advised Felix Baumgartner on his record-breaking skydive from the stratosphere last year.
The latest weather reports before the launch suggested winds would take Trappe to western Europe.
"Weather is absolutely the most dangerous factor," said Trappe speaking immediately before launch.
"But it's a double-edged sword." "It's the only thing that will carry me across, but bad conditions could also ruin the attempt or endanger my life."
Trappe and his team had faced an agonising wait of over 100 days in Caribou for weather conditions good enough to carry him across the 'Pond', typical for this time of year.
Global weather systems being monitored by the project meteorologists stared lining up on Monday, but local storms around Maine threatened to destroy the cluster balloon system and forced Trappe to stay grounded.
Trappe, an IT technical project manager from Raleigh, North Carolina, said: "It was nail biting waiting for a weather window that would allow me to get up into the air and catch those transatlantic winds we'd been seeing.
I need to get on them and ride them across like a conveyor belt."
During the crossing, Trappe faces climbing as high as 25,000ft to ride the winds that will propel him towards Europe.
To ascend he'll drop ballast and will pop balloons or release them into the air if he needs to fly lower because favourable winds are at lower altitudes.
Trappe already holds the record for the longest ever cluster balloon flight of 14 hours.
View our picture gallery above to see the incredible spectacle.
To follow Jonathan's progress through his official media partners visit: upacrosstheatlantic.com