Aero GP: Maverick, eat your heart out...

‘How do you fancy going for a plane trip?’ I was asked. ‘Great,’ I said, never one to shy away from an opportunity for adventure. The only thing they had forgotten to mention, however, was that this was no ordinary plane…

It was, in fact, a Sukhoi 29, a 450bhp beast capable of churning your stomach inside and out within a matter of seconds. Fortunately, my pilot was to be Andy “Horsepower” Bickmore, one of the most experienced and skilled the world over.

According to the brief I had been given, “many an air show has been awed by the dramatic way Andy harnesses the raw power of his machine”. At Little Gransden Airfield out in the Bedfordshire wilderness, I was about to find out for myself, first-hand.

After strapping me in – they probably take fewer precautions against escaping from a high-security jail – and with my sick bag rather unnervingly tucked away underneath my belts (“in case you need it”), it was time to hit the skies for ten minutes of pure, exhilarating, adrenaline-fuelled madness.

Andy briefed me on everything we were about to do - from pirouettes to nosedives - to make sure I was prepared for it and hadn’t passed out under the weight of the G-forces we were pulling. Everything, that is, except the 360…

It was probably best he didn’t pre-warn me about that, to be fair, as I would likely have chickened out of it, and I was very glad I didn’t. When we touched back down on terra firma at the end of the flight, I was like Oliver with his bowl of gruel. Please sir, I want some more…

Awesome, spectacular, breathless (quite literally…), there really are not enough words to fully do justice to the sensations, especially the initial one upon take-off as the sheer power – all 450 horses – hits you like a rocket.

Heavily involved with Russian aeroplanes, Andy will be representing the country in Aero GP, a sport he calls “unique”.

“It started off 12 years ago as a hobby,” he explained, “like these things always do. I was very fortunate at the time as a lot of my friends had some very high-performance aircraft, so I was spoiled from the start.

“It gets into your bloodstream, and once you’ve started there’s no going back. When I took the controls of a plane myself for the first time it was the biggest turning point of my life.”

A competition fanatic, Andy said when he was approached to take part in the new series he had absolutely no hesitation in saying yes.

“I went in for aerobatics and air display competitions,” he said, “and this had a big appeal for me.

“It’s very much an adrenaline rush, and what makes it difficult is that you are very conscious of who is around you. There’s a lot of buffeting which can disturb the aeroplane quite dramatically. Your main focus of course is on winning, but you are always having to think of an escape route as well as getting yourself around the track in the fastest time. In this sort of sport any accident is going to be a big one.”

Thankfully, there were no such scares during my all-too short experience in the life of a stunt pilot. These guys, you get the feeling, know exactly what they’re doing. They wouldn’t dare go up there if they didn’t.

And on that basis, having initially baulked at the idea once I saw what it actually entailed, I’d jump at the opportunity to do it all over again. Russell “Fearless” Atkins, signing off for duty.