Since about 1984 Flying by Foy have been flying people in the U.K. under the guidance of the Las Vegas office. It was soon realized that there was a need for a base in the U.K., so in 1985 An office was set up in Stowmarket, Suffolk. The business was operating as a branch of the Las Vegas operation, but as more and more projects were taken on, it seemed sensible to establish a U.K. branch.

In January 1992 Flying by Foy Ltd. was registered as a company in its own right. Since the first shows in the U.K. the company has continued to grow in size and reputation, and in October 1997 we moved to a much larger unit in Borehamwood, Herts.

The new venue offered much more space for research and development purposes along with storage, maintenance, testing etc. The location makes travelling into London and all around the U.K. and beyond, much easier.

Whilst Christmas would still be recognized as our busiest time, with many Peter Pans and Pantomimes, it is an all year round operation. We have become more involved with corporate events and launches over the last few years and this alongside the Theatre, Television, Pop Videos, Photo Shoots etc. keep us busy on a full time basis.

We would be very pleased to become involved in your project and look forward to hearing from you soon.

The history of theatrical flight dates back over two millennia, but the art of stage flying took a quantum leap in the second half on the twentieth century.

In 1950, a young Englishman named Peter Foy sailed from London's West End to stage the flying for a Broadway production of Peter Pan, starring Jean Arthur and Boris Karloff. Foy's services and the flying equipment were provided by Kirby's Flying Ballets, a British company hired by the show's producers after they discovered that virtually no theatrical flying had been performed in the United States for more than two decades.

Foy returned four years later to fly Mary Martin's Peter Pan when the musical version premiered in New York. For this show, he created a new system known as the Inter-Related Pendulum. Martin's soaring aerial choreography thrilled audiences and marked the beginning of a new era in stage flying, and Foy's subsequent technical innovations soon established "Flying by Foy" as the standard of the industry.

The Inter-Related Pendulum made possible spectacular, highly controlled, free flight, but required operators with a high degree of skill and a minimum of 40 feet of ceiling height in order to create a natural looking, effective pendulum swing. Foy solved the problem of flying actors in low height situations with the invention of the Floating Pulley in 1958. While this development was highly effective, the device was often visible to the audience.

His determination to preserve the magic of theatrical flight by concealing its apparatus from the audience's view led to his introduction of the patented Track on Track system in 1962, which allows two operators to independently control lift and travel. Since that time, Foy has improved upon the basic concept of Track on Track, most notably with the patented Inter-Reacting Compensator system, developed for touring productions of the Ice Capades.

Throughout his lifetime, Peter Foy has applied his mechanical ingenuity to the challenge of safely flying performers in a variety of different and often difficult circumstances. His creation of the Multi-Point Balance Harness for actors on film; he pioneered the use of self-contained truss system for touring shows, and also introduced the first self-contained radio-controlled flying system at the "Flower Expo" in Osaka, Japan in 1990.

Over the past half-century, he has single-handedly revolutionized methods and techniques used in stage flying that had remained virtually unchanged for 2,000 years. Perhaps this is one reason for the Health and Safety Codes Commission of the United States Institute of Theatre Technology presented to Peter Foy the 1990 International Entertainment Safety Award "for his singular, personal and creative contributions to safeguard human life during a period of 50 years in the entertainment industry and elevating the task of flying people with rigging to an art form".