Excited and happy tourist from Australia flew to Stratosphere

An adventure of a life time. I have been luck enough to travelled all over the world, dog sledding in Canada, canoeing in Antarctica, motorbikes in the Himalaya, to name a few but the MiG 29 Edge of space is one of the best adventures I have ever had. From the moment I was picked up from the airport to the time I was dropped back at the airport I was treated like a king. I met with strangers and left with new friends.

The day of the flight was very exciting, picked up at the hotel by our driver and my translator Irina I was taken to the Sokol plant, we had a very interesting visit to the museum, then it was off to meet my pilot Andrey Pechionkin and have a briefing on the aircraft and the flight program. Once this was done it was time to get into my G suite and flight clothing and out to the MiG 29, with the tension building we did our pre-flight checks and climb into the aircraft. More information on the controls and gauges, ejector seat then get strapped in and we are ready to go.

The flight was all I thought it would be , climbing out of the cloud at around 2 kilometres with the sun shining we head up, then with the speeding climbing we hit the after burners and accelerate to Mack 1.6 (1235 kilometres per hour), we reach our height of 17kms, and just about able to see the curvature of the earth. Andrey rolls the plane over the left wing and heads back down to the cloud, at this point you can really appreciate the speed of the aircraft as we head into the cloud. Braking out of the cloud we start out aerobatic program, this was fantastic, rolls, low level fly over, tail slides, turn including a 7G turn and then the chance to take control of the legendary MIG 29 preforming two rolls myself with the guidance of Andrey. Then all to quickly it was all over time to land.

Andrey and myself have a debrief after the flight and we discover that we were adversary of the cold war, we both joined the military in the same month of the same year, both ending up in German on opposite sides of the iron curtain, Andrey flight MiG 23 and myself working on Rapier surface to air missile. The pleasure of flying the MiG with and old adversary was a very special experience and one that I will never forget.

It's a big thank you to all the people involved, Victoria, all the guides, the drivers, my translator Irina, the five days was a fantastic experience that I would recommend to anyone.

My very best regards,
Jonathan