As the image above suggests, to find our answer we need not look towards the Swiss Alps, instead we should look at that other Watchmaking country, Germany.
The Flying Tourbillon was developed in 1920 in Glashütte. It was the head of the German Watchmaking school who invented it, his name: Alfred Helwig.
Like the classic tourbillon, its purpose is to counter the effects of gravity on the rate of the watch (rate deviances). It tries to achieve this by rotating the escapement and balance wheel in all possible directions.