Review: Flying a Hawker Hunter

Where: St. Stephan
When: 24th August, 2017
Booked with: MigFlug

Switzerland: the home of money laundering, beautiful scenery and Yves Rossy – the Jetman.  As James Bond once said: a Mig is not enough.  Almost immediately after my Russian trip, the need for speed took hold and started to strangle me with its weird beliefs.  I had to give it another go.

Deciding that those Russians were all pansies and didn’t know what real adrenaline was, I decided to go flying with a man that catches snakes and drinks their venom for breakfast, just to get his heart beating above resting rate.

Naturally I showed up all cocky, knowing that this would be a breeze compared to Russia.  I rubbed it in his face that his attempts would only result in feeble laughter aimed back at his pseudo Swiss bravery.  After all, it was an older plane, with far less agility and performance.  Yves took this to mean he could fly head on into mountains and wait until the last second to pull up, whilst then doing so many aerobatics and manoeuvres that it’s taken me two weeks to write this, as lost the ability to speak in my state of constant fear.

Yves continued to do everything within the realms of physics to destroy my belief that humans are good people, by continuing his tirade of abuse with rolls, loops, low level flying through valleys and formation flying with another fighter jet.

Me teaching Yves how to look cool.

Just as it was coming to an end, we had to go guide another plane in, as their speedometer had broken and they did not know how fast they were going.  I do not mean to boast, but this does make me a goddamn hero and you’re all welcome that you can sleep well tonight due to my heroics.

Overall, I would actually rate this better than the MiG.  Whilst it is not as fast, the landscape, aerobatics and low-level flying were more exciting.  Plus it’s in Switzerland, home of some of the worlds finest hotels.