Year of Adventures - L-39 Albatros flight

Video from the channel MiGFlug about Aero L-39 Albatros, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 8:18. Language: English. Video type: Onboard.

For an episode of the television series "Year of Adventures", host Ben Fogle flies as a passenger in an Aero L-39 Albatros. He departs from a former communist-era air base in Pilsen (Czech Republic), hidden in a forest an hour from Prague. Before the flight, pilot Vladimir shows him the aircraft and the ejection seat. Once in the air, the G-load builds progressively and several barrel rolls follow one another. Before landing there is a low-altitude pass capped off with a climbing roll.

During the briefing, it is shown how the ejection is triggered. The pilot agrees with the presenter that he will call out the load (two, three, four G) and wait for his response. Before take-off, a 10 km airspace safety zone is closed. In flight, at around 400 km/h, the presenter starts to lose his vision at 4 G and believes he blacked out for an instant during a roll. In the next maneuver he withstands 5 G by tensing his abdominal muscles, as the pilot instructed him.

In the video, the L-39 appears as a subsonic military training aircraft, with a top speed of around 900 km/h and capable of reaching 8 G. Today it is used for tourist flights. During the Cold War there were more than 75 jets at the base. For the presenter, the experience serves as a test ahead of a rally across the Australian outback.