Ask the Pilot

I take the "flight of a lifetime" on an F-4 Phantom fighter jet and am scared witless. But I'd do it again just to experience six G's.

Editor's note: A substantially different version of this article appeared in the Robb Report. This story has been corrected since it was originally published.

By Patrick Smith

Read more: Technology & Business, Vietnam, Business, P. Smith, Ask the Pilot

June 29, 2007 | "Out of control at or below 10,000 feet: Eject."

Of all the warnings, cautions and instructions in the training packet, that was the bullet point I kept coming back to. To this civilian-trained pilot, such terrifying scenarios aren't part of our checklists and procedures. Out of control? What do you mean, out of control? What exactly was I in for?

At the very least, I was in for a ride -- a 30-minute "flight of a lifetime" aboard a restored McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom fighter jet, owned and operated by the Collings Foundation, a well-known curator of historic military aircraft.

Founded in 1979, Collings is best known for its vintage World War II craft, including a B-17, and the only flyable example of a B-24 Liberator, both frequent stars of the air-show circuit. Though headquartered in Stowe, Mass., the foundation bases its supersonic Phantom out of Ellington Field, a joint civil-military airport just south of Houston. Here at Collings West, guests can partake in an "Unprecedented Civilian Flight Training Experience." Unprecedented because, to the best of anybody's knowledge, there are no other privately held F-4s anywhere in the world. The daylong course culminates with a hands-on demonstration flight tailored to the customer's experience and, well, stomach strength.

If you're into that sort of thing. As an adolescent aerobuff, and later an airline pilot, I have always been fascinated and compelled by civil aviation -- the airlines, their jetliners and the places they fly. If you'll permit me a moment of aviator blasphemy, there's a rather long list of things I'd rather be doing than vomiting in the skies over Texas in a 40-year-old war machine. The appeal just isn't there. To be perfectly frank, the whole idea has had me trembling with fear for the past two weeks.

So why have I come to Texas to participate in this nutty endeavor? One easy reason: I'm getting paid for it. I'm here on commission for Robb Report magazine, in whose fat, glossy pages -- "For the Luxury Lifestyle" -- a version of this account originally appeared.

Not that I didn't construct my share of Revell and Monogram fighter kits as a youngster. (Do kids still build plastic models?) And truth be told, if I have a soft spot for any single military plane, it's the Phantom, arguably the sexiest-looking fighter ever conceived. In the late '70s you would have seen an F-4 -- the U.S. Navy version, with arrester hook deployed -- strung with nylon fishing line from the ceiling of my bedroom. In spite of its mass (more than 50,000 pounds fully loaded) and power (18,000 pounds of thrust per engine, with afterburners), the Phantom cuts an unmistakably svelte profile. I wouldn't call it elegant, exactly; it's too menacing for that. It's a plane that looks, in a word, vicious, from the bullet tip of the radome to the sharp Gothic lines of the empennage (note the spooky downward cant of the stabilators).

Developed in the 1950s, the F-4 cut its teeth in Vietnam, often dogfighting over Southeast Asia with another Cold War icon, the Soviet-built MiG-21. (Collings has one of those too, and for an added price offers the extremely rare thrill of simulated air-to-air combat duels using both aircraft.) Phantoms later served with both the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds demonstration teams, and the type holds 25 speed and altitude records. More than 5,000 were constructed. The last American armed forces example was withdrawn from service in 1996; a few foreign nations continue to fly upgraded variants.

Collings' Phantom was built in 1966. Plucked from an Air Force boneyard, it was put through extensive overhaul. "Altogether, it took us four years to acquire and ready the plane," says Bill Bowers, a former Marine F-4 pilot and one of Collings' senior aircrew staff. I meet with Bowers over breakfast, and he fills me in on the jet's history. He downs a plate of French toast while I sit there nervously, politely declining to eat. My ride is set for 4 p.m.

From Bowers I learn that Collings never purchased the plane, technically. It was deeded to the foundation by the U.S. government. "That's something that literally takes an act of Congress," he explains. "We're highly fortunate to have this plane and be able to offer this extraordinary experience to the public."

I nod. Silently, I'm sketching out my last will and testament.

Bowers tells the story of the jet's painstaking overhaul, which included a refit with low-time General Electric engines. "We were lucky to find those motors," he says. Where they came from he doesn't say. A major score on Craigslist, maybe. He digs out some photos that show the plane in various stages of rebuilding. Like the jagged peak of an ice-swept mountain, the Phantom is a beautiful thing to admire, but if you ask me, only a brave (or foolish) few would get too close.

Today, I'm getting too close.

At 9 a.m. I'm at Ellington for a classroom briefing, followed by cockpit familiarization and ejection training. Collings' on-site facilities include a disabled ejection seat and a cockpit orientation trainer. Participants are issued a take-home, custom-fit Nomex flight suit (a keepsake that will become my all-purpose around-the-house-chore suit -- an ideal adaptation considering its 15 zippered pockets, including pockets in the knees and calf, the sanctioned uses of which nobody ever explained to me).

My flight instructor is Harry Daye, an Air Force veteran with more than 2,500 hours of F-4 experience, including 1,000 as an instructor. Harry will be in the forward cockpit seat, in command of our flight. Like everyone else at Collings, he volunteers his time. In his other life, Harry lives in Arizona and flies 737s for Southwest Airlines. Calm, confident, with just a tinge of raffish cocksure, Harry strikes me as the type of flier who embraces a certain kind of fate -- able to put equal trust in both his machine and himself. One gets a sense that Harry knows exactly what he's doing. And I like that, since secretly I'm scared witless.

Also enrolled in the day's program is Bill Disser, a retired aerospace engineer from California. He is scheduled to fly first, and that's fine with me, since it increases the chances of the plane breaking down and my own sortie getting canceled. Disser says he is 78, but he could easily pass for 30 years younger. He's something of an aviation swashbuckler (and, literally, a rocket scientist), and when I ask why he has paid close to $10,000 for this obscene thrill, he spouts the adrenaline junkie mantra -- which, I can't help admitting, sounds a bit odd coming from a septuagenarian retiree. "Faster planes, younger women and colder beer," he explains. "I'm into speed, that's my thing."

Me, I'm not into speed. I look at Disser and try to figure him out. Is he in fact a ridiculous person who spent a ridiculous amount of money to do ridiculous things in a ridiculous airplane? Or is the problem with me? Possibly I'm missing a chromosome -- the one with the gene that makes the majority of pilots savor the sensation of thundering through the air, upside down, at 500 knots. For me, it's not fun. Or maybe it could be fun -- just not in an antique plane scavenged from a desert surplus heap that you fear is about to crack into pieces. The Collings Phantom was built in 1966. I was built in 1966. The plane's mean-eyed sleekness and remarkable capabilities aside, I'd rather be lumbering to Hong Kong in a 747.

Which isn't to say I can't appreciate an extraordinary thrill. In Africa a few years ago, after finding myself submerged under a capsized raft amid the Grade 5 swirl of the Zambezi River, the experience came down to two simple words: never again. But was it worth it? Definitely. Or, I think so.

Strapping into an F-4, then, is consigning my dues -- payback for all my treasonous affections for the softer side of flying. Harry Daye is going to kick my romantic ass from cloud to cloud, and I'd better like it.

In the classroom, Harry presents a primer of the Phantom's onboard systems. Notable is a system that pumps high-velocity, superheated air over the wings to ward off laminar separation (stall) during high angles of attack and a stability augmentation system that fine-tunes the forces of roll, pitch and yaw. "Fighters are naturally unstable," Harry explains. "That allows them to be so maneuverable. The ideal fighter should be as unstable as possible, while still controllable."

"Sounds like my wife," cackles Disser.

Next page: Harry fires up the engines ... the racket they emit is unlike anything else