NEWS
MAVERICK'S FLYBY SA FLYER’S HOMETOWN for the past few years is Hoedspruit in Limpopo, which has been abuzz with excitement. For three months Top Gun movie star Tom Cruise and his immediate entourage have taken over an exclusive boutique luxury lodge in the town’s Hoedspruit Wildlife Estate. Tom is an accomplished pilot, who owns and flies many aircraft, including his own P51 Mustang. For Mission Impossible 6 he learned to fly helicopters and he owns an Airbus A350 B3 Squirrel. He brought this helicopter with him to South Africa, along with two matching pairs of beautiful Stearman 450 biplanes for the movie shoot.
with a "MiG" (actually an F-5), Cruise’s character Maverick buzzes the tower in his F-14 Tomcat, ‘Ghost rider’ despite having been refused permission by the tower, telling him, “Negative Ghost rider. The pattern’s full.” One of the more remarkable parallels is that a founding member of the Top Gun fighter pilot school was South Africa’s Brigadier General Dick Lord. And Lord later went on to become the Officer Commanding 1 Squadron, based at Hoedspruit. Cruise’s flyby was noted as ‘one of those ‘full circle moments. Goosebumps stuff.’ j
Cruise uses his Squirrel to commute between the luxury lodge in Hoedspruit Wildlife Estate and the movie shoot. His landing pad is within the CTR of the Hoedspruit Air Force Base so he is in contact with Hoedspruit Tower for each flight. Lt Colonel Liezle Hendricks is an Air Traffic Controller at Hoedspruit AFB and she asked Cruise to give them a flyby. Ever obliging, he did – and it was captured on video – https://m. facebook.com/groups/238511740496120/ permalink/690021755345114/ This flyby drew a number of parallels to the original Top Gun movie where one of the most famous scenes is where, after a showdown
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Tom Cruising.
