François ‘Ponpon’ Pousot is humming a tune, the kind of ditty one hums when walking in the park or mowing the lawn. But presently Pousot is some several thousand feet above the ground and travelling at 400kph. What is more, the two-seater Albatros fighter training jet that he’s flying is positioned vertically in the sky, three metres away from another fighter training jet. He eases the controls back and, with a few seconds of 4G pressing into his chest, he’s back on the level again. He is still humming.

“Of course I’m always concentrating, I always have my eyes on the leader,” says Pousot, who used to instruct newbie French Air Force fighter pilots on how to get the best out of their Mirage jets at Mach 2.5 for a living. “You don’t have time to look at the instruments or take in the view because a split second late on a manoeuvre and you’re not in a good place. But flying is what I do. My father was a fighter pilot. My mother was a pilot. My brother is a pilot, my wife and daughter too…”

Pousot is one of a team of seven flyers that make up the Breitling Jet Team, the only civilian aerobatic team in Europe. Based in Dijon, France, they’re precisely as you’d expect — all dudes in jeans, leather MA-1 jackets and, of course, wearing chunky Breitlings: a gold Navitimer here, a Chronomat there. But they defy expectations, too. Though they may feel the need for speed, they’re humble about it — self-controlled, professional. And that’s what you need when it feels as though you could reach out and touch the aircraft next to you.

The view from the twin-seater cockpit of the L-39C Albatros


“It’s the way I like to fly,” smiles Jacques ‘Speedy’ Bothelin, the team’s founder and, thanks to less-than-perfect eyesight as a teenager, the only aviator not to have been a fighter pilot. Instead, he became one of the world’s most experienced aerobatic pilots, with some 2,900 displays in 39 countries under his G-suit. “I could have switched to an airline job but it’s the difference between driving a racing car and driving a bus. Aerobatic flying is like music — you must master your instrument and decide what to play, but the object is to create emotion.”

He has, he says, often seen spectators well up with such emotion — and, by one measure, watching aerobatic displays is the second most popular spectator event in the UK after football. Not that it’s easy. The Breitling Jet Team, like others, flies aggressively so as to pack as many manoeuvres into as short and sharp a routine as possible. “Something has to happen [in the air] every five to 10 seconds or spectators turn away to buy an ice cream or something,” he says. “And it’s like the circus, both in the aesthetics of performance and the fact that the element of danger is what people want to see.”

Still, listening to Posout hum a jaunty tune mid-air tells you everything you need to know about danger. His placid calm largely comes down to the sheer amount of expertise, practice and trust that exists among the team members. Though positions in the team come up very rarely, Bothelin has only felt uncomfortable with new pilots during their training phase on two occasions, “and that was a matter of personality,” he says.

“We don’t tend to like guys who haven’t flown for two or three years, either. You get rusty out of the saddle,” adds Bothelin, pointing at the scars he carries from one incident — the result of an ever-unpredictable bird strike to his canopy. “But really it’s all about proper maintenance, recruitment, training. Mistakes get made during a display but they’re the kind of mistakes only we notice — not anticipating enough throttle action when you’re 10 feet behind the formation, for example. Things you can assess in order to improve the performance next time.”

The view from the twi-seater cockpit of the L-39C Albatr


Patrick ‘Gaston’ Marchant is the silver- haired wisecracker of the pack. He notes how losing the team’s previous sponsor, Martini, means they can’t drink while flying anymore, and adds that when they’re performing in the UK he gets confused “driving on the right, with all those roundabouts that go around the wrong way.” He explains that he got his slot on the team when a fellow pilot told him there was an opening (one his wife, well aware of the dangers, had forbidden him from applying for). A fighter pilot of 20 years’ standing, his contract at an end, he was considering working in fire bombing (flying specialist aircraft that scoops up and then drops huge quantities of water onto fires at low level) before finding himself touring the world and performing stunts in a wide variety of venues such as the South China Sea or the jungles of Borneo.

"I could have switched to an airline job but it’s the difference between driving a racing car and driving a bus. Aerobatic flying is like music..."

“That’s why I wear this watch in particular,” he laughs, tapping his Breitling Emergency, a gadget with an in-built location beacon, “because if I go down for some reason, I want to be found. I don’t care whether they find the wreck of the aircraft or not. Of course, this job is all about timing, and timing of the kind that means you don’t often get a chance to look at your watch. But as a pilot you also know that when you lose everything (and on some planes everything is electric, so that is possible) it’s your watch that will tell you how much fuel you have, where you are and how to get home.”

Yet there is a sense that these seven men are very much home already. They may each have their own ways: Bernard Charbonnel, the right inside wingman to the team leader, says he likes to be alone with his plane for half an hour before a display, while Gaston likes to work his way through three or four cigarettes. “Afterwards, everyone is so full of adrenaline, so pumped up with this feeling of strength, that the best thing any of us can do is sit down with a good beer.”

The team’s similarities far outnumber their differences by far, however. They share a certain chutzpah, a kind of cool, and, above all, an absolute dedication to flying. And this is flying of a rare kind. “The first time you’re asked to go into mortal combat you realise you’re not doing what you dreamed of as a boy,” says team member Christophe Deketelaere, who flew Jaguars in combat in the first Gulf War, in the Balkan wars and in various conflicts in Africa. “I was asked to attack this convoy and, to be honest, I wasn’t too happy about it. You just have to accept that it’s your job and your mission. But this, flying aerobatics, it’s what I like. When you’ve finished your mission — I mean display — and you see a lot of happy people, that’s a good feeling.”

The American Issue: Editor’s Letter

With Wheely, treat her to a bespoke, hand-delivered bouquet this Mother’s Day

The definitive ranking of James Bond actors