Yesterday Yves Rossy jumped out of a plane above France and, less than ten minutes later, became the first person to fly solo across the Channel using a single jet-propelled wing. It was Toy Story's Buzz Lightyear made flesh.

Many men have tried to fly like birds, from Icarus on. But mostly they strapped on wings, launched themselves off cliffs and relied on gravity for their descent - what Buzz would have called not so much flying as “falling with style”.

In an age when others strain to insert their name into record books by meeting challenges you never imagined counted as challenges (most books typed backwards, say), Rossy has made his mark by performing a feat that lifts the spirits of all who watched him glide across the Channel with an eagle's grace.

Orville Wright's historic flight, in 1903, of a “manned heavier than air machine” freed the world to dream of travel not limited by the reach of trains, ships and well-fed horses. Now Rossy allows us to believe that the future we dreamed of might soon arrive. Watching Star Trek on TV as children we envisioned a 21st century in which we would dress in silver one-piece suits and commute to work using personal jetpacks strapped on our backs. Belatedly, as Rossy himself puts it, science fiction has become science fact.

When the Swiss adventurer returns to his job as a pilot for a Swiss airline on Monday he will still be pinching himself over his triumph. It was not just that he made his crossing with a wing he built in his garage. Rossy landed in England just a day later than he had planned. That counts as an impressively modest delay by modern aviation standards, even without check-in baggage.