Time For The Big One

These flight schools will help you live out your Top Gun fighter jet fantasies.

- Basem Wasef

TONY SCOTT’S 1986 film Top Gun kindled many an adolescent’s fighter-jet obsession, which no doubt came rushing back thanks to last year’s sequel starring a youthfully 60-year-old Tom Cruise still turning and burning. Thankfully, select flight schools can indulge the fantasy with everything from a US$30,000 full-afterburner ride in an F-104 Starfighter, capable of more than Mach 2, to a Federal Aviation Administration-type rating for a host of decommissioned warbirds.

Learning how to captain one of these apex predators involves a highly specialised coterie of flight instructors and hardware – but first, naturally, a private pilot’s licence. Rick Svetkoff’s Starfighters International may not be able to teach Cessna 172 pilots how to fully operate the F-104 in a short window, but the pilot will come away understanding its aerodynamics, thrust, lift and, of course, the nearly unfathomable speed.