Loops and Whirls in the Sky

LONDON, July 30, 2007 — -- Let me offer a piece of advice if you ever are lucky enough — and I mean really lucky — to be offered a ride in a Red Bull Air Race plane as I was this past weekend.

Don't watch the test flight that comes before your own.

I did. And I was quickly regretting that I'd eaten breakfast that morning.

Air racing is a high-flying, sometimes dangerous pastime that makes auto racing, even air stunt shows, seem old-fashioned.

London staged its first race Sunday right over the Thames to a crowd of 35,000 spectators. That was just one stop in a world series sponsored by Red Bull that pits pilot against pilot in aerial slalom races, from Rio to Abu Dhabi to Monument Valley in Arizona.

There is flying. And there is auto racing. And then there is the one place on Earth, or a few feet above it to be exact, where the two come together with heart-thumping speed and acrobatics. That's air racing: two high speed propeller planes ripping through a slalom course just above Earth, and mixing in some acrobatic spins and sharp turns for good measure.

Head to the Clouds at 2,000 Feet Up

I got a firsthand taste of it, flying with an air-race pilot in training at an airfield just outside London. After seeing another pilot run the course before me, I was quickly wondering how I could manage to keep it, well, together up there.

As I slipped into the cockpit, I noticed they'd stuffed an air sickness bag into the seat, just in case. Having survived an F-16 ride-along without sullying the cockpit — I still have the pin and certificate that pilot gave me in recognition of that very fact — I vowed I would hold my own again.

We started with a straight, vertical shot up to 2,000 feet, just below the big cotton clouds. First, the pilot gingerly tested my comfort zone — a quick flip here, a double-spin there.

Then, as I started yelping like a kid on a roller coaster, he unleashed a stomach-turning joy ride. Spinning and flipping at 250 miles per hour, our bodies lurched from weightlessness to seven times the force of gravity.

We flew upside down over the airfield — and our own television crew on the ground.

We shot up to the clouds and then stalled before nose-diving to within a couple hundred feet from the ground. We did corkscrews and spins and sharp turns and a bunch of other moves I still don't have names for.

The thing is, I started to realize I was enjoying it. I couldn't get enough of it. The fear had disappeared somehow. By the time we touched down, I knew I'd never be able to fly a commercial flight again without missing this.

It is a modern version of the barnstorming days of the 1920s, when flying was still the realm of adventurers and daredevils. But it's also a reminder that while air travel today has become miserable for most of us, flying can still be gravity-defying fun.