From random walks to thermal rides: universal anomalous transport in soaring flights

Abstract Cross-country soaring flights rely on intermittent atmospheric updrafts to cover long distances, producing trajectories that alternate between rapid relocation and local exploration. From a large dataset of paraglider, hang glider and sailplane flights, we uncover a universal transport law: beyond short ballistic times, horizontal motion is persistently sub-ballistic, with a Hurst exponent ≈0.88 largely independent of aircraft type. Phase-resolved analysis using a probabilistic segmentation method shows that this scaling arises from the fundamentally intermittent, two-dimensional and directionally correlated nature of soaring transport, in which successive ballistic segments do not add coherently. We find that pilot skill, reflected in more efficient exploration and decision-making, manifests primarily in the search phase, enhancing the ability to efficiently probe the air mass and locate the next thermal. Overall, our results suggest that atmospheric structure and the generic organization of the transition–search–climb cycle dominate transport properties, placing human soaring alongside biological and physical systems where anomalous transport emerges from intermittency and persistence.