Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1474369
maltatoday | SUNDAY • 24 JULY 2022 14 EYEWITNESS Flying high OUTGOING UK prime minis- ter Boris Johnson took a ride in a Royal Air Force Typhhon over Lilcolnshire last week before he visited the Farnbarough Air Show in what is one of his official ap- pearances. Describing the flight he took from RAF Coningsby in Lin- colnshire last Thursday, he said: "Straight up like a vertical firecracker, we slipped the sur- ly bonds of Earth – as the po- et Magee puts it – and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings." The wing commander onboard asked him if he wanted to have a go, but Johnson checked if he was sure because the jet cost £75m and there were only 148 in the RAF's fleet. "Don't worry, you can't break it," he was told. "I thought, 'Oh well, famous last words," the prime minister said, recounting manoeuvring the gear stick to do "an aileron roll", "a fantastic loop the loop" and then "a more complicated thing called a barrel roll". He said: "We started to pull a few Gs, as they say, and when I came back to consciousness I could see the sea getting closer and closer." Johnson recalled the view this gave him of wind- farms and his fondness for "clean, green energy" that would help end "any dependence" on imported Russian oil and gas. "This reverie must have gone on for a while because my col- league said, 'Er, I am taking back control now', and we headed happily home," Johnson said. He asked how the Typhoon would fare against the first jet he flew in – an F-15E Strike Ea- gle – 25 years ago in South Car- olina and likened it to the ques- tion of "what would happen in a fight between a Tyrannosaurus rex and a killer whale". Johnson joked about sending critical Conservative MPs into space and recalled doing a "fan- tastic loop the loop" in an RAF Typhoon as he reflected on his premiership in a valedictory speech. While the race to replace him as prime minister narrowed in Westminster, Johnson told attendees at the Farnborough airshow that after "three happy years in the cockpit and after performing some pretty difficult if not astonishing feats", he was "going to hand over the controls seamlessly to someone else", but he added: "I don't know who."