Up, up and away!

The world looks much different from the front seat of an airplane, as it nose-dives toward Earth at a face-mashing rate of speed.

It looks terrifying — especially when your pilot smiles.

Maj. John Klatt has been a pilot for more than 20 years; he's flown three combat tours over Iraq in the F-16 fighter jet he wields on behalf of the Minnesota Air Guard's 148th Fighter Wing. He'll become a lieutenant colonel in October.

A few years ago, he apparently needed more excitement in his life, so he decided to become one of the world's best acrobatic stunt pilots (and a flying Air Guard billboard) as a day job.

Why?

“I just like flying,” he said as he lifted his Extra 300L off the ground toward a gap in the clouds above Plattsmouth Municipal Airport on Wednesday afternoon with a World-Herald reporter on board.

Klatt and his other, much sleeker stunt plane will perform at this weekend's Defenders of Freedom Open House and Air Show at Offutt Air Force Base in Bellevue. He and his crew were eager to give us a firsthand look at what audiences could expect.

Before the flight, his publicist handed over a sheaf of paperwork for me to sign.

I scribbled my initials down, acknowledging what the form called the “considerable” chance I'd end up disabled or dead.

Klatt offered me a can of Red Bull — as though I needed help staying awake.

He grabbed his own can and went to check the weather.

Klatt's father was an aircraft mechanic in the 1950s, so Klatt spent much of his childhood inside hangars or outside air shows.

“I always knew I wanted to fly,” he said.

So he did. He joined the Air National Guard at the end of his college career and first learned to fly the C-130 “Hercules” — a large, four-propeller plane used to transport troops and cargo.

But Klatt wanted to fly fighter jets, so he begged his superiors until he got the chance to make an unusual midcareer switch to the F-16 — a deadly single-engine jet originally designed to dominate air-to-air combat.

Klatt returned from his latest Iraq tour in January. He spent the majority of his 60-day rotation flying close air support missions for ground troops.

The Extra 300L is no F-16, but I didn't think about that as one of Klatt's crew members helped me strap on an emergency parachute.

“You won't need it,” he assured.

He helped me into my seat, tightened my shoulder straps snug and gently tucked an airsickness bag between my harness and chute.

“Just in case,” he said.

Minutes later, we were in the air. Klatt flipped the plane upside down a few times, allegedly to test my seat belt.

Soon, Klatt said something about “having some fun,” then pointed the aircraft straight up, climbed, stalled, flipped over and dived toward the ground.

He tried that a couple of times, along with a host of other maneuvers that made me thankful I skipped the cereal Wednesday morning.

His tricks subjected the two of us to 8.5 g's, more than eight times the force of Earth's gravity. Astronauts aboard Apollo 16 experienced 7.19 g's as they re-entered Earth's atmosphere.

As Klatt leveled the plane into a position rational pilots use, I fumbled for the barf bag. I wanted to celebrate not needing it, though I wasn't sure the pilot believed me.

“Are you gonna yak?” Klatt asked.

Contact the writer:

444-1068, johnny.perez@owh.com

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