It’s pretty eye opening for the passenger, too. Mastering the roll helps pilots learn more about their relationship to the plane they fly and its abilities. “The roll is certainly one of the fundamental maneuvers that you do, and it’s one of the first ones you do in aerobatics,” he explains. Most aerobatics combine those three actions in some way. Anderson, a professor of aerospace engineering at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and a pilot. “When we talk about aerobatic maneuvers, there’s roll, loop, spin,” says Richard P. Transport airliners are not certified for aerobatic flight, so pilots are not supposed to do that aerobatic-class planes are designed to withstand a certain number of positive and negative Gs, which makes them suitable for rolls and loops.

The most famous rolls in history may be the ones that aviator Alvin “Tex” Johnston demonstrated over Washington state in 1955-in a big Boeing 707 prototype aircraft. That’s different from, say, flying steady and inverted, which leaves the pilot and passenger hanging upside down from the restraining belts or flying with the wings consistently perpendicular to the ground, in which case you’re hanging sideways from your harness-a maneuver I experienced during that F-16 flight. The effect is such that a glass of tea on the dashboard could stay unspilled. It’s also possible for a pilot to roll a plane in a way that the G-forces (known as just Gs in the aviation community) stay positive, so that someone doesn’t feel pulled upside down by the Earth’s gravity. Ultimately, the simplest way of thinking about a generic roll is that the plane rotates around on its long axis from upright to upside down to rightside-up again. A pilot flying north who does a barrel roll will briefly be oriented west or east during the stunt. You might think that the barrel roll is the simplest, but that stunt is actually slightly more complex than you imagine: It involves part of a loop within the roll where the plane changes heading mid-maneuver. Rolls actually come in different forms-aviators perform aileron rolls, point rolls, barrel rolls, and slow rolls-and pilots can discuss or debate their subtleties. Footage courtesy of the US Air Force Thunderbirds Just roll with it Oh my god.” Image from a video showing the mid-roll moment in an F-16D. I said the exact same thing that time: “Wow. That honor goes to a physically punishing flight in an Air Force F-16, during which my pilot momentarily inverted us at the end of a steep climb, and then, later on, gently and slowly rolled the aircraft upside-down and back again. That moment in the T-6 wasn’t my first time flying upside down. But rolling in a T-6 or similar aircraft is a classic maneuver that’s worth trying out, or at least thinking about, if you’re in the I-love-flying camp.

Instead they sit upright on commercial flights, eating peanuts and watching movies like they would at home.

Unless they hop in a small aerobatic plane, most people don’t have the chance to fly inverted. “ airplane’s quite capable of a lot more,” Buehn, a veteran of the Vietnam War and former test pilot school instructor with the Air Force, told me after the flight, leaning on the plane’s wing. Just a few minutes later, Buehn landed his AT-6C aircraft-a restored plane originally made in 1942-at Reno Stead Airport. I remember a brief feeling of disorientation, but the flip was over in seconds. He then deftly executed an aileron roll, quickly steering the aircraft upside-down and then right-side up again. I was strapped in behind him, in the only other seat in the 38-foot long plane, and felt a push backwards as we climbed. Flying in a silver airplane over the brown desert hills of Nevada, pilot Dennis Buehn prepared to roll us by pointing the plane’s nose upwards above the horizon.

Air combat maneuvers barrel roll