What I Learned About Fear by Flying in a Cold War Jet

I met my pilot, Patrick, the night before he was to take me up in the air a mile above Lakeland, FL. He was one of eight pilots there as part of the legendary Breitling Jet Team, the evening after their first official North American flight. He joked that his nickname, Gaston, came from a French cartoon, a character famous for his narcolepsy.

"So if you hear me snore in the cockpit, just make sure to wake me up," he says.

He was kidding, sure, but that's the last thing you least want to hear when you know what's going to happen the next day: Patrick and his team are going to take you up into the air and fly in formation, hitting 3Gs of acceleration and going upside down more than a few times.

After learning that he spent 21 years in the French Air Force before coming right to Breitling, I felt reassured. These guys aren't biplane acrobats with a death wish. They were professionals, and their show would be something akin to synchronized swimming. Well, except for one thing: The "swimming" would take place in an L-39 Albatros, a Cold War-era fighter jet built by the Czechs when the country still had a "slovakia" at the end of it.

What could go wrong?

Once in a lifetime

I hate amusement park rides. I hate going upside down. I drive like somebody's grandpa, consistently 10 miles below the speed limit. My vision of hell is a series of roller coasters. Sometimes I get spells of motion sickness if I sit up too fast, or spend too long on a bus. No surprise, then, that I slept in fits the night before going up in a fighter jet.

And yet there's the part of me that has never minded flying, even if I tend to prefer big airliners to the chartered puddle jumper I flew in once in Panama. I'd jump at the opportunity to go into space. So would one of the people on this adventure with me: Jim Clash, a man who really planned to go into space aboard a Virgin Galactic flight someday. I was in good company.

Ultimately, I had to accept Breitling's offer to fly on one of its jets because this was the kind of opportunity that I would (likely) never have again—even if, from time to time, nightmare scenarios entered my head.

That morning, I was cautious and methodical with every step I took. Would my clothes be too tight, or too loose? Should I drink coffee because I'm deathly tired, or should I forgo it because the acid levels might make it come back up again? How much breakfast is too much breakfast? (I went with two pieces of toast.)

The bus picked us up just after I grabbed my second cup of coffee. I was going to do this. I couldn't back out now, and the thought had never seriously crossed my mind, even if I am the same coward who slept with my closet light on until I was 13.

"SO IF YOU HEAR ME SNORE IN THE COCKPIT, JUST MAKE SURE TO WAKE ME UP."

I should have been terrified, but I couldn't feel anything other than something akin to sensory overload. There's so much going on around you, and so much to see, and so much movement. Going straight up while entering a loop, you begin to feel it in your whole body that something is wrong. Coming out, as the g-forces set in, you begin to feel like Droopy, the sluggish dog, with your cheeks pulled to the edge of your face. I will say this: It helped immensely when Gaston would translate the team's radio patter into something I could understand about the future: "We're about to go in a loop," or "we're dipping down." Eventually, it helped me to prepare for whatever crazy move was about to happen.

Unreal

Lots of people I talked to about stunt flying seemed terrified at the thought of flying in formation, close enough to see your comrades, close enough that the wings could potentially touch and end it all. I found a certain comfort in flying in formation that was hard to quantify. Everyone was moving like this. Everyone was together.

So toward the end of the journey, when we broke formation, maybe that's why I felt my body catching up to me—the up-throttles and gravitational tugs and movements adding up to a lurching feeling in my stomach as we made our descent from a mile above the outskirts of Tampa and back to the airfield. "Don't get sick now. You can't get sick now," I thought, staring at the air sickness bag.

"DON'T GET SICK NOW. YOU CAN'T GET SICK NOW."

As we landed and as we taxied, I slowly breathed in and out, realizing that my moment in the fighter jet was done for the day, wondering if this meant I finally had to watch the movie Top Gun or give roller coasters another chance or convince my partner to go skydiving with me. Opening the hatch brings the relief of fresh air and getting the sweat-soaked helmet off my head, but also the sadness of an adventure concluded. It was maybe all of 10:30 on a Wednesday morning in Tampa. Now I was just going to grab lunch, hop in a commercial Airbus, and return to the Northeast.

There was a debrief and a van back to the hotel and some goodbyes and a decent burger at the hotel bar. There was the security check at the airport, a bottle of water, a bumpy plane ride, and a train ride home. Watching the cockpit video later that night, it occurred to me: it still hadn't sunk in that it was real. That an overly cautious nerd like me who would rather design a Mars or Neptune probe than fly to the ISS had zipped in the air and felt what few get to feel.

I had flown. I had got my wings. And I didn't even throw up while doing it.