New Haven — The horizon slowly slipped from view, passing beneath the wings of the Aero L-39 Albatros fighter jet, as we launched into a loop over the Long Island Sound. Upward we climbed — 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 feet — thrusting up into the clear sky like a missile.
Then, eerily, near the top of the loop, the plane started to tilt backward. Glued to my seat by the G-force, I watched the heavens above me become the heavens below me as we were suddenly flying upside down. As I craned my neck up to look down at the water, only two questions seemed to matter:
How will I explain this out-of-body experience to my friends?
Will I survive long enough to explain it?
It was a sunny Wednesday in May, and I was on a ride-along with the Breitling Jet Team, a civilian equivalent of the Navy Blue Angels that functions as a barnstorming unit and promotional tool for Breitling watches, a Swiss aviation-centric company that spares no expense in its attempt to dominate the skies.
The flight was the climax of a V.I.P. day at Tweed New Haven airport in Connecticut, on the team’s second year of their tour of the United States.
The point of the event was to encourage two dozen retailers, V.I.P. clients and journalists to experience and share Breitling’s high-testosterone brand. These watches are not just luxury items, but also serious tools for aviators.
The classic Navitimer (starting at $7,950), for instance, features a circular slide rule that allows pilots to calculate crucial data like average speed, fuel consumption and rate of descent. The Emergency line (starting at $15,685) has a distress beacon for downed pilots.
But for most guests, the draw was more primal: to live out a childhood fantasy of soaring with the eagles and, along the way, to test the limits of one’s stomach.
After a buffet lunch (steak, naturally), the seven of us selected for the day’s final ride donned black flight suits and sat through a brief but unsettling instruction on the use of an ejection seat and parachute.
Fitted with yellow crash helmets, we headed for the jets, flown mostly by French ex-fighter pilots. The captain of my ship was Christophe Deketelaere, or Douky. He flew Jaguar and Alpha jets for the Armée de L’air before signing on with Breitling. In “Top Gun” fashion, I would play Goose to his Maverick, occupying the rear seat of a two-passenger Czech-built Aero L-39.
Squeezing into an L-39 is a far cry from nestling into coach class on a 767. There’s hardly any airplane around you; it’s all Plexiglas canopy and implicit power. You feel as if you’re straddling a missile.
The L-39 did feature at least one commercial airline courtesy: a paper bag tucked above the instrument panel, should you need to vomit. “Goose would never lose his lunch,” I reassured myself.
I was heartened by how smooth takeoff felt. The seven jets floated into a tight V formation, and soon we were passing over the Connecticut coastline.
Any sense that this would be a joy ride was dashed the second we launched into our first loop, maintaining our wingtip-to-wingtip formation with the precision of Olympic synchronized swimmers.
The first half of a loop is actually not bad. Your 7,340-pound exoskeleton seems to slip away as you suddenly feel like you’re floating weightless.
The second half of the loop, however, is like a gut-wrenching death plunge on a 4,000-foot roller coaster. At four Gs, your vision grows blurry and your inner organs feel as if they are being vacuumed out a small hole in your back. “Goose would never lose his lunch,” I reminded myself.
Our first loop was followed by a second. I eyed the bag nervously.
I had little time to recover. Our wings had barely leveled after a barrell roll when Douky’s voice crackled over the intercom: “Alex, you want to take the next one?”
“When in Rome,” I answered, gingerly laying my fingers on the stick and pushing gently toward the left. As obedient as a golden retriever, the L-39 tilted into a second barrel roll. Our wings had not yet tipped 90 degrees when another impulse arose within me, one that superseded my taste for once-in-a-lifetime adventure.
“You finish it,” I said with a wheeze, releasing the stick and reaching for the bag. Douky completed the second roll and took pity on me for the remaining four minutes of the 16-minute flight.
As we floated gently back toward the runway, my nausea receded, and a profound sense of satisfaction came over me.
Did I survive? Of course.
Did I love it? Of course.
Did I figure out how to explain the experience to friends? I’m not sure that’s possible.
If nothing else, though, I learned why they call it a bucket list.
