First appeared in Air Force Times, summer 2000
The airman who strapped me into the airplane at MAPLE FLAG XXXIII wore a huge grin on his face. And the reason for his high spirits? The day before he’d gotten an incentive flight in an F-16D.
In addition to flying two “goes” a day as part of the air war, throughout the exercise our squadron was able to fly three incentive rides a day for our outstanding performers.
These incentive missions started with egress training, during which the incentive riders learned how to wear helmet, oxygen mask, g-suit, vest, and harness. Tucked into one g-suit pocket was a bottle of cold water; into another, a generous supply of “barf bags.” They received rapid-fire briefings on how to raise and lower the seat, adjust headset volume, and jettison the canopy. They listened to careful instructions on arming and operating the aircraft’s rocket-powered ejection seats—at which point they assumed the glassy-eyed, jittery-yet-excited look that you see on the faces of people lined up at a Las Vegas wedding chapel.
The MAPLE FLAG ramp, with its shrieking jet engines and incessant movement, was a second home to our incentive riders, most of whom were aircraft maintainers. However, as they stepped out of the van wearing borrowed flight suits and awkwardly clutching borrowed flight gear, they acted as if they were seeing it for the first time. They managed to keep up a brave front as friends—former friends—crowded up to make the traditional request of the incentive pilot: “Make ‘im puke, sir!!”
As the pilot tended to the familiar routine of the walk-around, they were hustled up the ladder and strapped in by fiendishly grinning co-workers, who punched them on the shoulder and bobbed their heads meaningfully as they scuttled back down the ladder. The pilot, also smiling, climbed up next to sit on the cockpit rail and go through the briefing one last time. Move that to raise the seat. This one’s the oxygen lever. Arm your seat with this. Intercom switches here. Canopy jettison. Ejection handle. Questions? A quick head shake (negative—I think) and he’s gone, down the ladder. Then the ladder, too, is gone.
It starts to hit them at this point: I’m really doing this…
They watch the pilot’s helmet darting back and forth in the front seat as he prepares for engine start, and hear a pop as the battery brings the intercom on line. “You there?” asks the pilot. They clear their throats, answer “loud and clear” just as the canopy descends around them, sealing them in. Heart rates at this point are well into triple digits. The engine starts with a rumble and the gauges jump to life as the generators wind up…
Ground operations are a blur and they quickly find themselves sitting at the end of the runway, with the pilot asking them to confirm the ejection seat is armed. “You ready to go?”
“You bet,” they manage, voices pitched just a little higher than normal.
“Approved unrestricted climb, report passing 15 thousand,” says another voice—the guy in the control tower, they realize, as the jet swings onto the runway. He sounds like he’s grinning, too.
“Hang on,” says the pilot, running up the engine and standing on the brakes.
They just have time to wonder “hang onto what…?” when the pilot releases brakes and lights the afterburner, mashing them back into the seat and catapulting them into another world…
Some incentive riders have to be helped out of the jet afterwards, their faces as green as their flight suits. Others burst out of the cockpit as soon as the canopy comes up and bounce down the ladder, thrilled, chattering excitedly about the flight to anyone who’ll listen. Back at the VAQ, they burn up long-distance phone lines late into the evening, trying to describe the sensations of power and freedom, and the unearthly beauty and brilliant light they found in the high reaches above the clouds. But words fail them, and eventually they sleep, exhausted but happy.
So he grinned as he strapped me in, that airman, knowing where I was going: back to that world he’d visited for a few short minutes the day before. His imagination would soar along with us that day as we climbed into the skies above Cold Lake.