Red Bull Flugtag Returns to Miami Today: a Flying Cuban Sandwich, FIU's Only College Team and UM's Malachi Glider at Bayfront Park

Red Bull Flugtag is back in Miami. The free event returned to Bayfront Park on Saturday for the first time in more than a decade, with 30 teams launching homemade, human-powered flying machines off a 30-foot flight deck into Biscayne Bay, according to the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau. Teams are judged on craft design, showmanship and flight distance, with opening ceremonies at noon, a final flight around 3:30 p.m. and an awards ceremony to follow. The world distance record the field is chasing is 258 feet, set in Long Beach, California, in 2013.

Miami's hometown entry with the most local flavor is The Cuban Flyer, built by the A Day in Miami podcast with Little Havana's Sanguich. The oversized, sandwich-inspired machine - complete with a Cuban flag tail - was built by a five-person crew that includes Sanguich's Daniel Figueredo and Rosa Romero, and its builders set out aiming at the world record of 78.5 metres.

Two Miami universities are flying, too. A team of FIU engineering students is the only college team in this year's event, FIU News reported; the undergraduates spent two months building their glider, chose their lightest member as pilot under the 400-pound overall limit, and planned a Pitbull tribute as their pre-flight skit. From the University of Miami, a 35-student engineering team called Planes and Canes built a 14-foot craft named the Malachi Glider for wide receiver Malachi Toney, who visited their lab; the glider flew as the honorary kickoff entry late Saturday morning.

Flugtag - German for 'flying day' - has been staged in more than 100 cities worldwide since its 1992 debut in Vienna. At Bayfront Park, the flying runs into the afternoon, and the park stays in Halloween mode after dark with the Boo on the Bay trick-or-treat event from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m.