The Boy Who Can Fly is the uplifting story of a young Scotsman who defies conventional expectations and gravity. Ever since he was young, growing up in Stonehaven, Liam Byrne has had a dream: to fly like the birds.
The Boy Who Can Fly is the story of the late Liam Byrne who defied conventional expectations and gravity. Ever since he was young, growing up in Stonehaven, in Northeast Scotland, Liam had a dream - to fly like the birds.
At just 23 years old Liam was already one of the youngest top-tier base jumpers in the world and British champion in performance wing-suit flying. Following Liam across a year, this documentary provides a glimpse into the mind of a born adventurer and free spirit as he prepared to take his boldest and most challenging leap yet: wing-suiting off Männlichen mountain in Switzerland. It’s a jump that’s over 2,000 feet up and a flight down that calls for an extremely technical level of wing-suit piloting, necessitating precision control to navigate the trees and gullies successfully and safely on the way down to the ground.
Liam was the first to say that what he did was inherently dangerous and to point out that it takes years of training and involves paying extremely close attention to safety on every single jump. In the film Liam also discussed how he copes with risk as part of pursuing his drive to come as close as he possibly can to experiencing what it is to fly.
Growing up in the Northeast of Scotland beside the forest, cliffs and the sea was a major inspiration for him and the support and encouragement of his Dad Mike, a former Commando, was also pivotal. Liam worked alongside his Dad in construction, to help earn money for jumps. Liam also talked candidly about craving for the freedom of living on the road in his van but also recognised the pressure and fear for his family that his passion for jumping entailed, and his hope to make coaching and competing his full-time work.
This programme was first broadcast in October 2024. Liam Byrne, passed away as a result of injuries sustained whilst undertaking a winged-suit jump in Switzerland, in June 2025.
The Boy Who Can Fly is produced by Storyboard Studios and is part of the Our Lives strand of documentaries from around the UK.
Text updated 23 June 2025
Publicity contact: PressOfficeScotland@bbc.co.uk
