Air Force Thunderbirds Jet Over Fort Worth This Weekend

The Daily Meal Staff|Oct. 24, 2014 4:11 pm EST

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FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) - Your body is forced back into the seat. The beige airport hangars and grey runway become a blur. There is a moment though during takeoff in a U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds F-16, where it's not unlike a faster version of a familiar commercial flight.

Then Major Tyler Ellison's voice comes through the speakers in your helmet. Here. Come. Some. G's.

The Thunderbirds team prepares you for the better part of three hours for that moment. You forget pretty much all of it.
"Best job in the world," Ellison later describes his career. "Wouldn't want to do anything else."

Ellison is the Operations Officer and was in the cockpit of Thunderbird #7 for that flight this week. The team was back in North Texas for the Fort Worth Alliance Air Show this weekend. The Thunderbirds came into existence more than 60 years ago as a way to showcase the Air Force. There are few better ways to do that than with an aircraft that can fly as fast as 1,500 mph. Duncanville's Christopher Audet still remembers the first time he saw them.

"I saw Thunderbirds for the first time when I was probably 7 years old," he said, while standing at the back of #7 this week. "Never forgot it. Most exciting thing in the world to me. I loved air shows. Always have."

In a military family with members in the Army, Marines and Navy, the Thunderbirds are why Audet joined the Air Force. They are why he worked became an F-16 mechanic. They are why he's part of the team of more than 100 now that travel the nation, performing.

Not that he gets to perform though. Most of the team members don't. They are on the ground, traveling, working day in and day out. Aside from maybe a familiarization flight or two, they don't get to experience the adrenaline rush that attracted them. And Audet said, it's still worth it.
"Everywhere we go, everywhere we go, wearing this uniform, people recognize it," he said.

Staff Sergeant Madeline Conley, who helps trains first-timers like this reporter for a flight, said she knows shes making an impact, every time a little girl sees her as part of the team. "If you love the mission, everything else comes easy," she said.

The training from Conley, Ellison and Major Michael Carletti, the flight surgeon and TCU graduate, only jolts back into the brain, as your body is weighed down under four-times the force of gravity. Your jet rockets to 9,000 feet high within a few second, flips upside down, and then levels out before you have time to even realize what happened.

For the rest of the ride every flip, roll and turn just refuels your adrenaline. It is a mentally and physically tiring, and inspiring, 90 minute flight. In a military branch with a proud tradition, the Thunderbirds team gets to be part of it week in and week out, for 10 months of the year. It's something no one can ever flip, roll turn or take away.

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