tom cruise pilot license

Simple Flying

What planes does tom cruise own.

Let’s take a look at Tom Cruise’s aircraft collection.

• Tom Cruise is a licensed pilot with qualifications as a multi-engine instrument-rated pilot and helicopter flying skills.
• Cruise owns a collection of airplanes, including a vintage P-51 Mustang fighter from World War II and a Gulfstream IV G4 jet.
• There may be additional aircraft in Cruise's fleet, such as a HondaJet and a Bombardier Challenger 300 jet, according to a travel expert.

It wasn't just a show for 'Top Gun.' Tom Cruise is one of the few actors who genuinely love aviation. He has been a licensed pilot since 1994 and is able to fly several types of aircraft. However, it doesn't stop with a license. The famous Hollywood actor also has a collection of airplanes varying from vintage fighters to business jets.

What kind of license does Cruise have?

In various discussions, Tom Cruise has revealed that his affinity for aviation was crucial to his initial attraction to the original 'Top Gun.' He shared that he holds qualifications as a multi-engine instrument-rated pilot and has continued to enhance his skill set throughout his life. Notably, he acquired helicopter flying skills for the remarkable stunts seen in the 2018 film 'Mission Impossible: Fallout.'

Plane collection

North American P-51 Mustang fighter

During a segment on The Late Late Show, Cruise took host James Corden for a ride in his own vintage P-51 Mustang fighter plane. Tom Cruise acquired this World War II fighter in 2001, which was initially built in 1946.

The P-51 Mustang was an American long-range fighter bomber that served alongside other conflicts during World War II and the Korean War. It was developed by North American Aviation and was retired in 1984. Nevertheless, even today, the fighter is utilized for air racing by civilian pilots. After being donated to an Illinois museum, the plane underwent restoration in 1997.

Get the latest aviation news straight to your inbox: Sign up for our newsletters today.

Making his recent performance in ' Top Gun: Maverick ,' Tom Cruise takes to the skies in the P-51 Mustang fighter. What adds intrigue to this is the revelation that he wasn't just portraying the pilot on screen – he was actually at the controls of his very own P-51 Mustang fighter.

Gulfstream IV G4 jet

With an estimated price tag of $20 million, this jet boasts the capability to accommodate as many as 19 passengers. Notably, it reportedly comes furnished with luxuries, including a jacuzzi and a dedicated movie-screening room, according to Business Insider.

The Gulfstream IV G4 is a long-range executive jet designed and built by Gulfstream , a General Dynamics company based in Savannah, Georgia, United States, from 1985 until 2018. Its production spanned from 1985 to 2018, resulting in over 900 G4 units taking to the skies. This jet can cover distances of up to 7,100 kilometers and achieve a top speed of 850 kilometers per hour.

Is there more?

Whether the actor has more aircraft in its fleet has been under speculation as it was never officially confirmed. But according to a Business Insider report, in addition to the vintage fighter jet and the Gulfstream IV G4, Jack Sweeney, who is famous for reporting the travel habits of numerous celebrities, including Elon Musk, said he has been able to identify Cruise's HondaJet and a Bombardier Challenger 300 jet.

Want answers to more key questions in aviation? Check out the rest of our guides here .

Sources: Business Insider , South China Morning Post

Is Tom Cruise a real pilot? All about his flying dream

• by Chege Karomo
•  – on May 26, 2022
•  in People

Tom Cruise returns for the second installment of  Top Gun , which promises to be an improvement on the first one. However, before the film’s premiere, Cruise teamed up with television host and actor James Corden to promote the movie. In 2018, Tom took James skydiving; in 2022, Tom strapped him into a plane piloted by the  Mission Impossible  star. 

“I’m gonna go up in a 75-year-old plane with someone who isn’t a pilot? Yeah, that sounds like a good idea,”  Corden protested . 

If it were another actor, it’d be difficult to believe that they were a pilot. However, given Tom Cruise’s penchant for performing his own stunts, it’s pretty easy to fathom Cruise having a pilot’s license. 

Tom Cruise has held a pilot’s license since 1994

Tom Cruise qualified as a pilot in 1994, nearly three decades ago. Cruise reportedly owns several planes, including a luxury Gulfstream jet and his beloved P-51 Mustang, a WWII fighter that’ll appear in  Top Gun . 

“The P-51 Mustang you see in the movie is actually my plane, so I got to pilot in those sequences,” Cruise told  Hello magazine . “I also got to be in the jet fighter a lot more this time, which was thrilling. It was something I had been working up to.”

Cruise told the outlet that  Top Gun  allowed him to fulfill two dreams: flying and acting. “All I ever wanted to be was a pilot or an actor, so Top Gun was a huge moment in so many respects, including my passion for aviation,” Cruise said. “I got to actually fly in an F-14 jet which was a dream come true, and play a character I loved in Maverick.”

Tom told the PA News Service that he advocated for realism in the new  Top Gun , translating to as little computer trickery as possible. For Cruise, a man with a decades-old flying license, flying would be easy, but the rest of the cast needed intense training. 

For three months, the actors developed skills crafted by Cruise and learned how to film while inside the aircraft. However, few can match Tom Cruise, as Miles Teller admitted that he never got used to the feeling:

“We trained for this for a long time, Tom had us in a flight programme for several months before we ever started filming. But it was never something you really ever got, like, super comfortable with, at least for me. It was something that every time I went up, it really tested me and I felt like I wanted to puke pretty much every time.”

Cruise didn’t get to fly the F-18 Super Hornet in  Top Gun

Cruise may be an experienced pilot, but the military doesn’t hand the keys to one of their most prized assets to anyone with a flying license. 

The military hasn’t given a reason why it didn’t offer Cruise the F-18 Super Hornet, but we think money has a lot to do with it. The jet costs $70 million, nearly half of the film’s $152 budget. Few insurers would accept to insure potential damage of such an aircraft. 

Furthermore, despite having a pilot’s license, Cruise may not have the requisite skill to fly an F-18 safely – placing one in his hands would put lives at risk. The crew and cast filmed using real F-18 jets driven by trained Navy pilots. 

Read Next: Is The Darkstar a real plane? Its real-life inspirations explained

RELATED ARTICLES

What is kristel candelario’s ethnicity the convict’s ecuadorian roots, what is maria georgas’ ethnicity the reality star’s greek roots, who are ben marshall’s parents the comedian’s parentage discussed, where is coryxkenshin now the youtuber’s social media break explain.

Thu 25 Apr 2024

2024 newspaper of the year

@ Contact us

Your newsletters

Can Tom Cruise fly fighter jets? When he got his pilot’s licence and how much of Top Gun he’s flying for real

Tom cruise is famous for his commitment to realism, and frequently performs his own stunts.

The much anticipated Top Gun: Maverick i s about to hit the big screen, and critics are already raving about the quality of the flight scenes.

Tom Cruise is famous for his commitment to realism, frequently performs his own stunts, and even broke his ankle while filming Mission Impossible in London in 2018.

But does the daredevil do his own flying? Here’s everything you need to know.

What can we expect from the new Top Gun ?

Pete “Maverick” Mitchell is back and is still feeling the need for speed. His bosses have him in their line of fire, but he remains the best navy test pilot around and commands respect from his flying colleagues.

There is a seemingly impossible mission to blow up an Iranian uranium enrichment plant and Maverick is dispatched to train up an elite team of graduates for the task.

Expect some breathtaking aerobatic displays which, judging by the critics and not entirely surprisingly, outstrip those of the original.

Geoffrey Macnab, writing in i , said “the aerial photography is every bit as spectacular as you would expect”.

The sequel, he adds, “defies cynicism and confirms Tom Cruise’s status as Hollywood’s ‘mission leader’ when it comes to blockbusters ”.

Deadline Hollywood praised the film saying it “tops the original in every way imaginable” adding it is “an example of Hollywood filmmaking at its zenith”.

The original Top Gun was released on 16 May, 1986 and went on to become one of the most famous films of the 80s.

In 2015, the United States Library of Congress selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry, deeming it “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.

Is the flying real?

Cruise is well known for doing his own stunts, and he has built that reputation through decades of action films such as the Mission Impossible and Jack Reacher movies.

“People had asked for a sequel for decades,” Cruise told the PA News service. “And the thing I said to the studio from the beginning was: ‘If I’m ever going to entertain this, we’re shooting everything practically. I’m in that F/A-18, period.”

The cast of Maverick underwent serious training in how to cope in the air, meaning the footage you see is in fact real, not CGI.

The course was developed by Cruise, lated three months, and included tuition in underwater evacuation, aerial aviation and flight itself.

They were also prepared for the dynamic pressures of G-force.

They started in single-engined planes, moved on to a Czech-designed jet trainer called the Aero L-39 Albatros, and then the F-18 Super Hornet.

Miles Teller, who plays ‘Rooster’ the son of ‘Goose’ from the original film, explained: “We trained for this for a long time, Tom had us in a flight programme for several months before we ever started filming.

“But it was never something you really ever got, like, super comfortable with, at least for me. It was something that every time I went up, it really tested me and I felt like I wanted to puke pretty much every time.”

The team also learned to operate cameras and about cinematography as they were essentially filming themselves up there.

But were they actually in control of the aircraft?

Despite this training the Navy did insist on having trained officers at the controls of the F-18 Super Hornet, which is worth £56m.

Glen Roberts, the chief of the Pentagon’s entertainment media office, said a regulation bars non-military personnel from controlling a Defence Department asset other than small arms in training scenarios.

Instead, the actors rode behind F/A-18 pilots, and external shots are of trained Navy pilots.

Cruise, who has been a licensed pilot since 1994, did fly a P-51 propeller-driven fighter plane and a few helicopters for the movie.

The planes aircraft carriers and military bases are also real locations.

Who else stars in the Top Gun: Maverick ?

The cast includes:

• Tom Cruise as Captain Peter “Maverick” Mitchell, a test pilot
• Miles Teller as Lieutenant Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw
• Jennifer Connelly as Penelope “Penny” Benjamin
• Val Kilmer as Lieutenant Tom “Iceman” Kazansky
• Jon Hamm as Vice Admiral Beau “Cyclone” Simpson
• Ed Harris Rear Admiral Chester “Hammer” Cain

It was directed by Joseph Kosinski and written by Ehren Kruger, Eric Warren Singer, and long-time Cruise collaborator, Christopher McQuarrie.

Top Gun: Maverick is dedicated to the director of the original Top Gun , Tony Scott, who died in 2012.

Lady Gaga has co-written Hold My Hand , the lead song for the sequel’s soundtrack’s.

Those who remember the original Top Gun will recall its big hit song was Berlin’s You Take My Breath Away . It won an Oscar for Best Original Song.

When is Top Gun: Maverick released?

It is set for release in UK cinemas on 27 May.

Most Read By Subscribers

Things you buy through our links may earn  Vox Media  a commission.

Tom Cruise Created a Flight-Training Program for Top Gun: Maverick

Along with his deep ties to Scientology , Tom Cruise is also known for his commitment to real stunts. So it should come as no surprise he wanted the actors in Top Gun: Maverick to actually deliver their lines from the cockpits of moving F/A-18 planes. “I wasn’t ready to make a sequel until we had a special story worthy of a sequel and until technology evolved so we could delve deeper into the experience of a fighter pilot,” Cruise said in a promotional video for the movie.

Without proper preparation, however, g-forces exerted on the body by acceleration can result in illness or a dangerous loss of consciousness. To combat that, he personally designed a rigorous monthlong program that introduced his co-stars to different jets and instructors as they learned to fly and slowly built up their g-force tolerance. According to Men’s Health , the aspiring aviators eventually had to sustain up to eight g’s, or around 1,600 pounds of pressure. The cast — including Monica Barbaro, Glen Powell, Greg Tarzan Davis, Jay Ellis, Danny Ramirez, Miles Teller, and Lewis Pullman — filled out daily forms for Cruise to review until they were ready for real Navy pilots to take them up in F/A-18s equipped with six IMAX-quality cameras. (The Pentagon reportedly does not allow nonmilitary personnel to operate F/A-18s.) From puking to getting personalized feedback, here’s what Cruise’s co-stars have described going through during the Top Gun training made by “Maverick” himself.

Miles Teller (Lt. Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw)

“Nothing bonds a cast together more than collective suffering,” Teller said in the Cannes production notes for Top Gun: Maveric k. “I think, when you’re going through something and you know how tough it is yourself, and you look to the left of you and to the right of you and you see that person going through it, it kind of pushes you a little harder and further than you would normally go. It’s so unique for us that we will only be able to talk about this with each other for the rest of our lives.” Ahhh, trauma bonding.

Teller explained to Men’s Journal that all the elements of Cruise’s training, even breathing techniques, were utilized during the final sequences shot in the F/A-18s. “Every single day of the shoot we were really getting after it,” he said. “Up until the very last day people were fainting and puking.” In fact, Teller told London Live that he personally felt like vomiting every time he went in the air. “It’s funny,” he said, pausing to chuckle with the interviewer. After a moment, however, he added, “Wasn’t so funny for me.”

Monica Barbaro (Lt. Natasha “Phoenix” Trace)

In the Cannes production notes , Barbaro credited Cruise’s training program with preparing her not only to act in the planes but also turn cameras on and off, check makeup, fix props, and communicate with pilots. She explained to The Wrap that Cruise’s “perfect” training program also included minute-by-minute rehearsals with a pilot in a fake plane so that actors could plan when to say their lines. “It was pretty intense,” she said. “We got to watch Tom do it a few times. I was the first person of us pilots to do it. I was the guinea pig.” And while the cast had to go through all the rigorous flight training before even stepping on set, per the New York Daily News , Barbaro made it clear that the work continued during the ten-month shoot. “If we ever had a day off from filming, we would be sent over to the airport to go fly … to keep sustaining Gs,” she said. “It would’ve been a huge disservice to get out of shape.”

Lewis Pullman (Lt. Robert “Bob” Floyd)

Pullman didn’t mince words when it came to describing the experience of g-forces. “It felt like you had an elephant sit on top of you,” he told the Daily News . “You’re trying to keep all the blood to your brain so you don’t pass out, and you’re trying to remember your lines and you’re trying to look cool doing it.” Or as he later put it to The Ringer , “It’s sort of like your spine is sliding back into the chair and a rhinoceros just popped a squat on your lap.”

Pullman said that Cruise’s training regimen condensed two years of flight training into three months, covering everything Cruise wished he’d been taught on the original Top Gun. According to Pullman, one of the planes used during training actually allowed the cast to pull more g’s than needed for the final shoot. “So if we could master that without a G-suit, once we got up in the F-18s, it would be like we had been running with weights on,” he explained.

He was also impressed by the tailored feedback that came with the program. Initially, Pullman said, the cast thought that no one was reading the evaluation forms they were asked to fill out every day. “But whenever we saw Tom, he would come up to us and say, ‘Hey man, I saw that on your last flight you had a little trouble pulling zero Gs. Here’s what I do,’” Pullman recalled. “It was like, ‘Holy smokes, Tom Cruise is taking the time out of his jam-packed day to give me personal tips.’”

Danny Ramirez (Lt. Mickey “Fanboy” Garcia)

In an interview with Men’s Health , Ramirez called the intensive training program “the Tom Cruise School of Being a Badass.” He added that logging more than 40 hours of flight time “pulling mad Gs” taught him “the art of puking and rallying.” Before he shot Top Gun: Maverick , Ramirez apparently had never known how to recover after vomiting. “So in a confined space, and to be able to push through it, I was very proud of it,” he told The Ringer. “I was like, ‘I don’t want to be cut out of this movie.’” He also shared his admiration for his co-stars who were going through the same training, noting that Barbaro “for sure never puked,” despite pulling the most g’s on the EA-300. “But Lewis [Pullman] has the most grit of anyone I’ve ever met,” Ramirez recalled. “He was going to puke and instead said, ‘Not today,’ and swallowed it all back down.”

Jay Ellis (Lt. Reuben “Payback” Fitch)

“Flying commercial is boring now,” Ellis said when TMZ stopped him, appropriately, outside of LAX. He told the A.V. Club that Cruise’s commitment to reading everyone’s daily questionnaires was humbling. The cast submitted responses on a computer that were then sent to Cruise. “The next day you would get an email from Tom,” Ellis recalled. “And he would say, ‘Hey, I read your questions last night. Going to add a few more days to your flight training. Does next week work for you?’” But Ellis’s training takeaways weren’t limited to aviation. According to Ellis’s interview with Men’s Health , Cruise taught him to keep viewers engaged by being conscious of camera movements, which he later brought to his roles on Mrs. America and season four of Insecure . The skill seems like it’d be useful on any set, but especially so on Top Gun: Maverick, given that director Joseph Kosinski estimated that every 60 to 70 minutes of acting in the sky translated to a mere minute of usable footage.

Greg Tarzan Davis (Lt. Javy “Coyote” Machado)

Davis told The Ringer that he lied during his audition for Top Gun: Maverick and said that he was not afraid of heights. As you might expect, that meant he had some fears to face when it came to flight training. But according to the cast, the training was set up to explain the mechanics and physics of what would happen on the plane before they took flight. “Tom makes sure you feel comfortable with it, then he lets the instructors do what they need to do,” Davis said.

Still, he faced his own physical challenges while in the air taking g’s. In addition to g-forces distorting his face so much that it looked like the life in his body “drained out,” he struggled with motion sickness. Due to the camera setup, he could not look at the horizon to settle his stomach. “You have to look inside the cockpit — that makes you even sicker,” he said. Like his fellow onscreen pilots, Davis also praised Cruise for actively responding to the training questionnaires in hopes of improving the learning experience. “He’s like the greatest Yelp reviewer ever,” Davis said.

Glenn Powell (Lt. Jake “Hangman” Seresin)

At CinemaCon , Powell explained that Cruise put together the training program so that his co-stars wouldn’t be puking or passing out in government assets. “Half the shots in this movie, I’m literally holding a bag of my puke,” he admitted, noting that pulling g’s was incredibly painful. “Every time we went up there you have to mentally brace for a fight,” he said. “You get on the ground and you’re exhausted. That’s what’s impressive about Tom. He’s flying more than anyone in the movie — he would fly three times a day.” Powell told The Ringer that breathing in the face masks for pilots required pushing out and sucking in air nearly to the point of hyperventilation. Cast members also had to learn to do a flexing maneuver to keep blood from rushing away from the brain and to the legs. But whenever the said maneuver was executed incorrectly? “You can see the tunnel start to close in and you’re like, ‘Oh no,’” Powell said. “You just try to keep pushing blood back in your head so you don’t black out.”

Still, with Cruise in the lead, the training program was inspiring to his younger co-stars. According to Powell, the seasoned actor gave “all the young guns” on the film an iPad with Ground School, which would allow them to study to become pilots in real life. “I started flying on my own, and Tom was with me every step of the way,” Powell said. “After I got my private pilot’s license, there was a note waiting for me on the ground from Tom that said, ‘Welcome to the Skies.’”

• top gun: maverick
• on the record
• monica barbaro
• glen powell
• greg tarzan davis
• danny ramirez
• miles teller
• lewis pullman

Most Viewed Stories

• Cinematrix No. 44: April 25, 2024
• The Man Who Gossiped Too Much  
• Bonus Cinematrix: The Criterion Channel Edition
• Baby Reindeer Does Something Remarkable
• Everything Barbra Streisand Eats in Her 970-Page Memoir
• Shōgun Finale Recap: Scholar of the Wind

Editor’s Picks

Most Popular

What is your email.

This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us.

Sign In To Continue Reading

Create your free account.

Password must be at least 8 characters and contain:

• Lower case letters (a-z)
• Upper case letters (A-Z)
• Numbers (0-9)
• Special Characters (!@#$%^&*)

As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York , which you can opt out of anytime.

• Search Please fill out this field.
• Manage Your Subscription
• Give a Gift Subscription
• Newsletters
• Sweepstakes
• Entertainment

Tom Cruise Paid for Glen Powell to Get His Pilot's License After Working on 'Top Gun: Maverick'

Tom Cruise and Glen Powell costar in the upcoming  Top Gun: Maverick

Top Gun: Maverick star Glen Powell is officially a pilot — and it’s all thanks to Tom Cruise !

On Tuesday, Powell, 31, revealed on Instagram that he had received his pilot’s license after Cruise paid for his flight school as a Christmas present. In the Instagram post, Powell shared a video of himself celebrating with his instructor after successfully flying his first solo flight.

“Try not falling in love with aviation after living out every pilot’s dream while shooting @topgunmovie,” the actor wrote. “Especially when you see the way @tomcruise flexes it. After wrapping a shooting day, Tom would rocket off into the sunset in his P-51 while I would limply shuffle into the cast van.”

Powell continued: “The wings were just so much cooler than the wheels…and for Christmas, Tom bought me an iPad with my flight school downloaded and prepaid. And yesterday, after months of flying, studying, and testing…I’m the real deal.”

“This is a video of me after my first solo flight,” he added. “It’s a tradition in the aviation community for your instructor to tear away your shirt signifying that teacher’s finally ‘off your back.’ My instructor @wallysaygers is just following ceremony, he doesn’t rip off my clothes after every flight.”

Powell concluded his post by writing, “Thank you Tom for being my hype man every step of the way. If you’re looking for me, look ☝🏼.”

Powell and Cruise, 57, costar alongside Miles Teller , Monica Barbaro , Jay Ellis , Lewis Pullman and Danny Ramirez in the highly-anticipated Top Gun sequel Top Gun: Maverick.

The film takes place more than 30 years after the original Top Gun hit theaters in 1986 and follows Cruise’s iconic character, Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, as he gives additional training to graduate fighter pilots for the Navy.

Teller stars as Lt. Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw, the son of Goose, who died in the 1986 film and was played by Anthony Edwards. Val Kilmer , meanwhile, is reprising his role as Iceman, while Jon Hamm , Jennifer Connelly and Ed Harris round out the star-studded cast.

“The movie is in really, really good shape,” Powell told PEOPLE of the sequel last month. “I have never felt more confident about people being so pleased with what we’ve put out in this movie. I know there’s a lot of expectation on it, but obviously pressure’s a privilege, and I think we did it.”

“Tom’s as great as people think he is,” he added. “He’s as nice, he’s as hardworking, he’s as generous, he’s as available. He’s the man.”

Top Gun: Maverick flies into theaters June 24.

Related Articles

Does Tom Cruise Really Know How To Fly Jets?

Tom Cruise has made headlines for a lot of unique reasons over the years, from his epic on-set rants to his volatile love life, passionate devotion to Scientology, celebrity feuds, and various disturbing truths that fans tend to ignore . Even his passion for aviation has often gotten folks talking, like when he accepted his 2023 MTV Movie & TV Award from a plane, took James Corden for a flight in a World War II P-51 Mustang, and intensified his weird relationship with the royals with a bizarre fly-by message to King Charles on coronation weekend.

Indeed, fans will know Cruise loves flying, and he's all about doing his own stunts. Remember his climb up Dubai's Burj Khalifa in "Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol"? Yes, he really was 1,700 feet in the air, hanging by a thin wire. "The whole thing was one, extended, hair-raising moment," director Brad Bird told the  New York Daily News at the time. How about that scene in "Mission: Impossible Fall Out" where he's dangling off a helicopter? Yes, he did that too. "It's all Tom flying, 100% of it," stunt coordinator Wade Eastwood told the Los Angeles Times . Most impressive, however, are all of the scenes in which Cruise appears to be piloting various fighter jets, which has left many wondering whether the actor can really fly. We can explain.

Yes, Tom Cruise does really know how to fly

Tom Cruise doesn't just talk the talk — he loves flying, and he really does know how to fly. As he told Conan O'Brien in 2019, "As a little kid, I wanted to fly airplanes, and I wanted to make movies." With his work, he's found a way to combine the two, and many of his films, like "Top Gun: Maverick," are an ode to his beloved hobby. "I'm a pilot myself," he enthused. "I love flying, and I love aviation, so this is also just a love letter to aviation." This is why he demanded that he be allowed to fly an F-14 himself, and the studio agreed. "I went through all the pilot training, and then I filmed three flights in the F-14 in one day — it was a dream of mine," he said.

However, Cruise was flying long before then. He originally got his license in 1994, and as he told WIRED in 2017, he can indeed fly airplanes. "I'm a multi-engine instrument-rated commercial pilot," he explained. What's more, he can also pilot a helicopter and got his license so he could film his dream helicopter sequence for "Mission: Impossible – Fallout." Not too shabby! "I fly aerobatics in that," he shared . "I'm a commercially-rated helicopter pilot also." As the movie's stunt coordinator, Wade Eastwood, told Thrillist , Cruise also underwent stunt training and totally crushed it. "Tom is a great pilot," he applauded.

The military refused to give Tom Cruise access to one special plane

Tom Cruise's flight skills may garner plenty of confidence from his crew, but the US Navy didn't fully share that sentiment. In 2020, Cruise told Empire that when he and producer Jerry Bruckheimer started planning "Top Gun: Maverick," he wholeheartedly opposed the use of special effects and demanded that he be allowed to fly an actual F-18. However, despite being allowed to helm an F-14, Bruckheimer told Empire (via USA Today ), "The Navy wouldn't let him fly an F-18." Even so, his skills as a pilot are on full display in the flick. "He flies a P-51 in the movie and he flies helicopters," the producer shared. "He can do just about anything in an airplane."

As for those F-18 sequences, they had to get creative. They agreed to use two-seater F/A-18 Fs instead, so a professional could pilot the plane, the actor could be in the back, and CGI could take care of the rest. As "Maverick" stunt coordinator Kevin LaRosa II told GQ , it was the next best thing. "The beauty is that really is a shot of Tom in the back seat of that F-18, so he is there, being piloted by a genuine naval aviator," he enthused. What's more, Cruise told Channel 4 Sport , he was sort of allowed to fly the plane. "They let me have a stick in the back and a throttle, so there were times where they let me fly in fly formation," he said.

NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

Top Gun Maverick: Is Tom Cruise a qualified pilot?

Share this with

Top Gun: Maverick  has officially landed in UK cinemas with Tom Cruise returning as hotshot fighter pilot Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell.  

Three decades after the original  Top Gun  movie aired in 1986, the highly anticipated sequel sees Maverick return to the danger zone and teach the latest Top Gun recruits how to fly.  

The Mission Impossible actor had promised to deliver thrilling aviation scenes with some of the most complicated aerial sequences in film history. 

The action star is known for his commitment to doing his own stunts, even going so far as  breaking his ankle on Mission Impossible: Fallout with the footage still making the final movie.

From helicopters to fighter jets, the 59-year-old has demonstrated his aviation skills on screen, but was any of it real? 

Is Tom Cruise a qualified pilot? 

Tom Cruise has actually had a pilot’s licence for almost 30 years now, after securing his qualification in 1994. 

Cruise thought it was worth getting his licence after getting a taste for aviation in the original Top Gun film. 

The real-life action man also has a licence to fly helicopters and demonstrated his abilities in complex aerial sequences in Mission Impossible as well as Top Gun: Maverick.   

In fact, all the aerial sequences in the action-packed sequel are real. Not even one flight in the movie uses CGI, thanks to Cruise’s extensive flying training plan for the actors who had to take to the skies in the movie. 

Throughout the film, Cruise and his co-stars including Miles Teller as his former best friend Goose’s son fly P-51 propeller-driven fighter planes as the military pilots. 

The legendary actor recently showcased his skills for James Corden on the Late Late Show  as he took the Gavin and Stacey star to the Top Gun training school.

Corden was terrified as Cruise began the ascent in a small plane and he declared: ‘I’m going to go up in a 75-year-old plane with somebody who is not a pilot.’

However, Corden faced his fears and strapped in for a whirl in the fighter jet where Cruise let loose with his tricks and flips. 

Cruise sported his iconic smile as Corden bellowed expletives in his ear: ‘Oh my God, shut up! Oh God, you absolute b*****d.’

The actor teased: ‘We’ll just fly straight, just relax, just take it easy for a little bit’ before turning the plane upside down.

‘Oh b*****ks, oh f****ing hell!’ Corden shouted as Cruise beamed. 

Cruise’s rigorous training plan allowed the crew to film the flight sequences in a similar way to GoPro films created by Navy pilots. 

Your Daily Horoscope

Daily horoscope today: April 25, 2024 astrological predictions for your star sign

Special rigs were created to go allow six cameras to be fixed inside the cockpit to capture the aircraft and the actor in 6k resolution as they performed each stunt. 

MORE : Tom Cruise reveals how the amazing flight stunts in Top Gun: Maverick were shot

MORE : Top Gun: Maverick producer reveals biggest challenge to making sequel and Tom Cruise mantra that pulled them through

Got a story?

If you’ve got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the Metro.co.uk entertainment team by emailing us [email protected], calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we’d love to hear from you.

Get us in your feed

Cookie banner

We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy . Please also read our Privacy Notice and Terms of Use , which became effective December 20, 2019.

By choosing I Accept , you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies.

Filed under:

Welcome to Tom Cruise’s Flight School for ‘Top Gun: Maverick’

If there was to be a sequel to the ’80s classic ‘Top Gun,’ it was going to need to be even better than the original—and way more realistic. Before the movie hits theaters, the cast of ‘Maverick’ explains what it took to become on-screen pilots.

Share this story

• Share this on Facebook
• Share this on Twitter
• Share All sharing options

Share All sharing options for: Welcome to Tom Cruise’s Flight School for ‘Top Gun: Maverick’

In the middle of shooting Top Gun , producer Jerry Bruckheimer realized he had a huge problem: With the exception of Tom Cruise, all the actors playing Navy pilots kept vomiting in the cockpit. “Their heads were down, and when they got their heads up, their eyes were rolling back,” Bruckheimer says. “It was terrible. They were all sick.”

On a scrappy budget with clunky 1980s technology, an untrained cast, and new studio leadership, filming eventually moved to an L.A. soundstage, where those actors could settle their stomachs while pretending to fly on a gimbal instead. The disrupted, piecemealed experience stuck with Cruise long after—despite the movie’s eventual massive box office success and canonization as a modern classic, the A-list actor had little desire to revive Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. “Originally, I wasn’t interested in doing a sequel,” he told Total Film magazine , at least not until technology—and his castmates—could “put the audience inside that F-18.”

Three decades later, Bruckheimer and director Joseph Kosinski flew to Paris to convince him they could. During a 20-minute break on the set of Mission: Impossible—Fallout , Kosinski pitched a sequel centered on Cruise’s aging fighter pilot and his strained relationship with his best friend Goose’s son. “I wanted it to be a rite-of-passage story for Maverick,” says Kosinski, who tried appealing to his star’s extremist sensibilities by promising to shoot everything practically. The director had seen Navy pilots use GoPros on their flights, documenting a first-person experience above the clouds that was “better than any aerial footage I’d seen from any movie,” he says. “I showed that to [Tom] and said this is available for free on the internet. If we can’t beat this, there’s no point in making this movie—and he agreed.”

Over the next 15 months, Kosinski collaborated with naval advisers and aerospace corporations, building six specialized IMAX cameras for an F-18 cockpit, mapping out highwire action sequences through tight canyons, and developing a specialized “CineJet” with aerial coordinator Kevin LaRosa II to capture it all from the air. “A lot of what we did was cutting-edge,” LaRosa says. “That technology came to fruition as the story came to fruition, and Top Gun: Maverick became a real thing.” At the same time, Cruise started his own preparations, vetting a cast of young pilots—Miles Teller, Glen Powell, Jay Ellis, Monica Barbaro, Greg Tarzan Davis, Lewis Pullman, and Danny Ramirez—before developing a specialized flight training gauntlet so that everyone could conquer the sky. “He knew the goal was to not only get his footage in the plane, but to get them all in the planes,” Kosinski says. “He just wanted them to be prepared, and he knew exactly what it was going to take.”

Leaning on years of his own piloting experience, Cruise put together a detailed aviation curriculum, connecting actors with trusted flight instructors, building up their G-force tolerance to unthinkable levels, and readying their transition into the F-18 cockpit. The result is breathtaking, a collage of immersive, madcap flying sequences and high-octane performances—a testament to Cruise’s unrelenting drive to pack as much thrill-seeking euphoria into Top Gun: Maverick as humanly possible. “He will do whatever it takes to give audiences the ride of a lifetime,” Powell says. “It’s so infectious to be a part of.”

Part 1: “I Never Signed That Waiver.”

Because Top Gun: Maverick would be shot practically, Kosinski and Bruckheimer needed actors who were unafraid to fly and could subject themselves to intensive training. Not everyone who auditioned was truthful right away.

Joseph Kosinski (director): I made it very clear from the very first meeting: We’re going to shoot this for real. This means you’re going in a real F-18 and flying in these scenes. A lot of people tapped out.

Lewis Pullman (Robert “Bob” Floyd): You go to an audition like that and you’re like, “Damn, that would be cool but it’s never going to happen.” Then they said, “We want to sign you up as long as you’re not scared of flying.” I fly all the time commercially—Spirit Airlines, all the greats. They were like, “It might be a little different than that.”

Monica Barbaro (Natasha “Phoenix” Trace): Joe asked me if I was afraid of flying, to which I said, “No”—then he told me that we’d be flying in jets. I got goosebumps.

Greg Tarzan Davis (Javy “Coyote” Machado): I lied to Joe. I was just given a piece of paper for the audition saying, “Are you afraid of flying?” “Are you afraid of heights?” Of course I said, “No.”

Danny Ramirez (Mickey “Fanboy” Garcia): We had to sign a paper before we stepped into the audition room because otherwise I would have lied to him, and that would have started the relationship on the wrong foot.

Glen Powell (Jake “Hangman” Seresin): I keep hearing all the other guys talk about signing a waiver that you were not afraid of flying. I never signed that waiver.

Pullman: It kind of snuck up on me what we were really doing. They were like, “You’re going to actually fly in these planes.”

Ramirez: I was absolutely terrified whenever I was on commercial flights. My routine was two glasses of wine and Bose headphones to tune everything out.

Kosinski: I looked at hundreds of actors, narrowed it down to my favorite two or three [for each role] and then I sat with Jerry and Tom and, drawing on their decades of experience, we selected our final team.

Jerry Bruckheimer (producer): You look at their body of work, you look at who they are. They sit down in front of you, look you in the eye, and you can tell that they’re committed and that they want to advance their career through a movie like Top Gun .

Kosinski: I think it’s gut instinct, really.

Barbaro: I genuinely love flying. I told Joe in the room that I weirdly enjoy turbulence, and he quietly looked down at his notes like, “OK.” I was like, “That was a weird thing to say.” And then later I thought about it—that was probably the perfect thing to say.

Powell: None of that stuff had ever fazed me. One of the reasons I decided to sign on to the movie was the opportunity to be in the back of real F-18s and shoot this thing all practically. I didn’t want to pass it up. I was all in.

Ramirez: The first week, Monica was like, “It’s crazy this is going to be the peak of our careers,” and Tom’s like, “No, no, no, don’t you repeat that.” He’s like, “We didn’t just cast you guys because you’re great for [your roles]. We cast you because we think you’re going to be the next great movie stars.”

Part 2: “It Feels Like You’re Strapped in by a Couple Shoelaces.”

As part of Cruise’s extensive training program, actors learned to fly inside single-engine Cessnas before graduating to the EA-300 and L-39—aerobatic planes capable of pulling more G’s—to mimic the feeling of being inside an F-18.

Pullman: Tom had personally designed a training regimen that would basically condense two years of flight training into three months—and it was all done in a way that Tom had wished he’d had for himself on the original Top Gun .

Kosinski: He’s a licensed pilot. He flies aerobatics, he flies helicopters, he’s very familiar with what it takes to be in these planes.

Ramirez: Before we even got on a flight, they taught us about what creates lift and the physics of flight. That popped the bubble of fear for me.

Davis: Tom makes sure you feel comfortable with it, then he lets the instructors do what they need to do.

Kevin LaRosa Jr. (aerial coordinator): My dad and I started training all the cast in Cessna 172s. Where to look, how to talk on the radio, how to take off and land, basic flying technique—where and how to look like pilots while flying.

Barbaro: We never flew solo because legally you can’t unless you have a pilot’s license, but we got to a point where we were talking with the tower.

Powell: I’d been cast first, so I’d had a couple more opportunities to be in the Cessna. But I’d never done a takeoff and landing.

Ramirez: We showed up at Van Nuys Airport. I see Glen’s car parked with a big Texas license plate, and I’m like, “Oh, I’ve seen this guy from Scream Queens , he was pretty funny.”

Powell: I remember grabbing a Subway sandwich, getting to know each other in the parking lot. And then it’s like, “All right you guys, ready to fly?!”

Ramirez: It’s my first time, so I’m also a little nervous. As we’re on the runway and taking off, I’m looking at Kevin LaRosa Sr.’s hands, but they’re really relaxed, and they slowly start slipping off. I look over and we’re taking off because Glen is the one pulling back on the controls. I just panicked: Glen Powell from Scream Queens is the first person in this whole movie that’s taking me up in the air? What the hell?

Powell: We got up in the air and I could see he was kind of breathing a little heavier than normal. I looked back and said, “Everything good?”

Ramirez: We ended up flying for about an hour. He lands the plane, and I was like, “I would have never sat in that Cessna had I known that Glen was going to be the one that took me up.”

Powell: We were thrown in the deep end. The amount of trust that these guys had in us from the get-go was wild.

LaRosa: There were definitely actors who were very forward-leaning—fearless, loved every second of it. And then the normal person who’d be like, “Oh my goodness, I can’t believe I’m going to do this.”

Barbaro: We moved on to an Extra-300, which does all kinds of crazy loops and can pull nine G’s with two people in it.

LaRosa: G-forces are created when we apply a velocity or direction change to mass. They can be formed by the jet changing direction. The best analogy is when you’re on a roller coaster and you enter a corkscrew or loop, you feel your body being pressed into the seat—that might only be two G’s.

Pullman: Tom figured you could pull more G’s in the Extra-300 than the F-18, so if we could master that without a G-suit, once we got up in the F-18s, it would be like we had been running with weights on.

Powell: It’s almost like you’re spiraling down in a tornado formation, and you get these big wide turns that get smaller and smaller to increase the G’s until you’re on the verge of blacking out.

Davis: I have video footage of my face being distorted to the maximum. All the life drained out of my body.

Pullman: When you go inverted and you’re upside down, you’re just dangling over nothing. It feels like you’re strapped in by a couple shoelaces. I basically took it upon myself to go skydive. I was like, “If I can jump out of a plane willingly, then I can do all this stuff.”

Powell: Monica and I had this amazing competition every time where we could see who could pull more G’s. You’d do these fake bombing runs over and over, and I think Monica and I got to 6 or 7 at one point. That girl is tough.

Barbaro: We moved on to an L-39 jet. We did some dogfighting with each other, and then we got to fly in the F-18s. And then as refreshers we would fly in the EA-300 just to keep up with our training.

Pullman : We would do these little surveys after each flight. You write down how many G’s you pulled, what maneuvers you did, what challenges you may have had.

Davis: It was like a review-all questionnaire. How do you feel up there? What did you learn? How can we improve on your experience to make you more comfortable?

Pullman: In the beginning, we were all just filling them out not really thinking, Who is reading this? But whenever we saw Tom, he would come up to us and say, “Hey man, I saw that on your last flight you had a little trouble pulling zero G’s. Here’s what I do.” It was like, “Holy smokes, Tom Cruise is taking the time out of his jam-packed day to give me personal tips.”

Kosinski: We had our hands full. It was great to have Tom.

Bruckheimer: He checked the log, found out if somebody didn’t show up. He made sure everybody was there and did what they had to do.

Davis: He’s like the greatest Yelp reviewer ever.

In addition to the aerial training, the cast also needed to pass a Naval Aviation Survival Training course to simulate an ocean landing.

Kosinski: For people who didn’t like to swim, it was really difficult.

Ramirez: Tarzan didn’t even know how to swim when the whole thing started. We all felt like little tadpoles, but our instructor was a U.S. Olympic coach.

Pullman: I grew up swimming a lot, but it’s still different from swimming. It was like forced drowning. They drag you on a zip line to simulate being ejected overseas.

Davis: We had to gear up in about 40 pounds of Navy equipment. The helo-dunker submerges itself in water and flips upside down—it’s a complete 180, and you’re tied to a chair and you have to make your way out through a window.

Pullman: You have to have one hand on some part of the cockpit at all points, and if you have both hands off, you get disqualified. It was a challenge, to say the least.

Davis: Then we had a few tries with blackout goggles on our faces, and that’s when Lewis tried to drown me. [ Laughs .] He couldn’t get out the window fast enough.

Pullman: I also had a 101-degree fever that day and I couldn’t change the appointment so I basically had to do it all while incredibly sick.

Powell: You’re literally in a washing machine under water blindfolded and strapped in.

Ramirez: Glen and I had just passed the blindfold test, but Tarzan had failed one of the runs, so Glen was like, “Let’s go in there with him out of solidarity.” I felt a little cocky like, “Hell yeah, I’ve done it already.” We’re upside down, and I keep trying to open this harness, and Glen’s like, “All right, see you later.”

Powell: I’m literally blindfolded trying to find my way out like he is. He tells this story like I looked at him in the eyes and then abandoned him. Danny, you know that’s not how it happened, man.

Ramirez: I’d forgotten the emergency sign for the scuba divers to pull me out. I was about to open my mouth and swallow a bunch of water. Finally the harness slightly opens up, I squiggle my way out of there, break through the window, breach, and take the biggest gasp of air I’ve ever taken. I went up to the guys: “You didn’t see me down there unable to get loose on the screens?” And they were like, “No dude, we thought you were just chilling, you looked so composed and collected.”

Powell: I thought it was really fun, but if you’re having trouble with your harness and something gets stuck, it’s a pretty scary environment. I never panicked, but that moment for Danny I know is pretty scary. If I knew he was having a problem I would have totally gone over to help him. But I had a blindfold on.

Pullman: At the end of the day, everyone was always checking in on each other, making sure nobody was falling behind. It felt like a very safe space and everyone wanted each other to succeed.

Ramirez: The swim element was more like trauma-bonding.

Part 3: “You Can See the Tunnel Start to Close.”

Though none of the actors actually flew F-18s by themselves, they rehearsed repeatedly on the ground with their professional pilots to mimic each other’s movements and maneuvers, making it easier to perform and stay coordinated in the air. Still, sustaining eight G’s and flying at low altitudes provided all kinds of challenges.

Kosinski: We would do a two-hour brief every morning where we would go through everybody’s work—storyboard by storyboard, line by line, where the sun had to be, what the terrain had to be, what the choreography of the planes had to be. We had to make sure the Navy pilots and actors were in perfect sync.

Pullman: That was pivotal. Once you’re up there in the cockpit, you’re kind of on your own. You can’t walk down to Joe Kosinski and be like, “Did we get that take? Can we move on?”

LaRosa: He can’t be in the air with his cast, so he’s so involved in the planning and briefing stage. We always went through the same formula: What are we going to do on this flight? How are we going to obtain all of that on this flight? And we end it with safety being paramount.

Kosinski: After that we would move to something called “the buck,” which was a plywood mockup of the F-18 cockpit with all the instruments and switches in the same place, but on the ground. We would walk through the entire day’s work shot by shot—spray the sweat on, turn the camera on, turn the camera off. It was a very tedious process to go through.

Pullman: Tom would sit on the outside of the buck and run the scene with you and give you direction and tips about how to make it more dynamic or more intense. Because these cameras are more stagnant and fixed onto the frame of the F-18, you have to kind of create your own dynamics within the frame.

Barbaro: There were four cameras facing us that were fastened to the cockpit, and two pointing toward the front of the plane over the shoulder of the actual pilot that was flying us.

Ramirez: As weapons system operators, [Lewis and I] had a tougher task of being back there and not looking in the direction we were flying. When we were banking to the right, we’re looking to the left.

Barbaro: We would have to sort of direct or remind our pilot exactly where to line up with the sun. For example, if I was flying in a certain direction in the morning and Lewis was flying with the same pilot later in the day, they had to fly in the opposite direction so that there was continuity.

Kosinski: I wanted it to be muscle memory because when you’re pulling six or seven G’s, you don’t want to think about anything.

LaRosa: Typically, jets would go on an hour-and-a-half mission, return, and then debrief. We’d sit there and watch all the footage with the pilots and the cast and Joe would say, “Oh I need you to look a little more this way, need you to fix your mask here, furrow your brow more.”

Powell: You’re running cameras, you’ve got to remember your lines, you’ve got to [remember] sun position and keep that consistent, know where the other airplane is so you don’t run into another aircraft, the altitude, the airspeed—all these things have to be together. When you’re up there, you’re the pilot in command, you’re the only one who is in charge of this stuff. It’s a very empowering experience.

During a training run in Top Gun: Maverick, in which the pilots must ascend at a vertical angle to eclipse a mountain peak, Coyote (Davis) blacks out at eight G’s and descends into a free fall before regaining consciousness. One of the movie’s most extreme scenes, it epitomizes the physical toll required to be an F-18 pilot.

Kosinski: It was one of the first sequences we shot, and it was such an important one because the footage that Tarzan got on that flight was so spectacular that when we put it on the big screen, it really motivated everybody.

LaRosa: There’s a shot from behind the F-18 slow-rolling toward the ground. That is a real, practical shot. That’s me in the CineJet chasing an F-18 toward the earth as if the pilot has passed out. We’re doing 400 miles per hour.

Pullman: What we learned in preparation of getting into the F-18 and pulling G’s was you have to do this thing called the “Hick maneuver” to stop the blood from leaving your brain and rushing to your legs. You flex from your calves, to your thighs, to your core, to your chest, to your head in succession so it flushes all the blood up to your head.

Davis: I realized if I were to do the Hick maneuver well, I’m not really passed out, and the audience would see that on camera. So as I’m going, I am literally dying not being able to do the Hick maneuver—and I still have to act.

LaRosa: For Tarzan, he’s on a jet rolling toward the ground.

Davis: I definitely have to trust my freaking pilot. He also played limp, so they could match the cut in the edit. I’m like “Yo, when are you going to pull up?” At one moment we were really close to the ground. Pull up! Pull up!

Kosinski: He swore to God he didn’t pass out, but we all think he might have.

Davis: People thought I really passed out. I did not—that was just some damn good acting.

Barbaro: It takes a lot of core strength and a lot of clenching to stay awake and control the aircraft.

LaRosa: You have like 1,700 pounds of pressure on your chest.

Pullman: It’s sort of like your spine is sliding back into the chair and a rhinoceros just popped a squat on your lap.

Powell: In order to breathe in those face masks, you have to push out air in order to suck in air, so you’re almost hyperventilating in order to breathe. If you’re not doing the Hick maneuver correctly, you can see the tunnel start to close in and you’re like, “Oh no.” You just try to keep pushing blood back in your head so you don’t black out.

Davis: When you have motion sickness, they say to look at the horizon and it will settle your stomach. You can’t do that in the F-18 because the cameras are directly in front of you. You have to look inside the cockpit—that makes you even sicker.

Powell: I’ve got to give Lewis and Danny credit as WSOs. They’re looking all around this canopy and when a turn happens, they’re looking in the opposite direction, which is the easiest way to get sick. It is brutal.

Pullman: I tried [Dramamine] on the first flight, but you have to be so cognitively alert. I couldn’t have any fog, I had to be incredibly sharp up there. So I had to find some ways to settle the stomach.

Ramirez: Lewis and I will be the first to admit that we puked.

Powell: You keep your puke bag in your leg pocket. Sometimes when you’re pulling these really dynamic maneuvers with high G’s, you can’t even bend your body to grab that bag.

Ramirez: You just open it up and send your lunch back down.

Davis: You have to push through, you have to rally. You have to know once you get down, everybody’s going to be watching you.

LaRosa: If someone goes out in an aircraft and gets sick, typically you’re done for the day. You feel washed out and tired, you want to rest. We got our cast to a level where they would get sick and fight through it. There’s no pulling over.

Powell: The rite of passage after every flight is you have to go straight from the plane to the briefing room. You would show your empty puke bag to kind of be like, “Did it.” So I would end up taking two puke bags back there—one to puke in and one to show. And then at a certain point I just owned it.

Ramirez: Monica for sure never puked. She was also the person that pulled the most G’s on the EA-300. But Lewis has the most grit of anyone I’ve ever met. He was going to puke and instead said, “Not today,” and swallowed it all back down.

Powell: I’d have a stick and throttle in the back, and if I could put my hand on the stick and throttle and do some kind of maneuvers, there was something mentally [about] controlling the aircraft instead of being a passenger, it changed everything.

Kosinski: Every day was a struggle for those pilots—and the Top Gun pilots themselves. If you haven’t flown in a week or two, and you get back in that jet, they get sick as well. But you have to just learn how to work through it.

Ramirez: In college, I never learned how to puke and rally. So in a confined space, and to be able to push through it, I was very proud of it. I was like, “I don’t want to be cut out of this movie.”

Part 4: “Tom Cruise Is Maverick.”

Cruise’s reputation as an extreme stunt performer and adrenaline junkie preceded his arrival to set, but throughout shooting Top Gun: Maverick , his ambition and daredevilish feats blended with his character and continued to defy the cast and crew’s expectations.

Kosinski: We were shooting the third-act scene in the snow-covered mountains at Whidbey Island. One day, the weather was so spectacular and we had so much work to do, so Tom flew three sorties in a day. Most of our actors would fly once a day. On the last flight, he came back to the debrief room. I could tell he was exhausted and he just sat down on the chair and he put his black Ray-Bans from Risky Business on. I was like, “How did it go?” And he said, “We crushed it.” And he did crush it.

Davis: At one point we were too high up above the canyons, and Tom saw the footage and was like, “This doesn’t work, there’s no danger in this.” And when he says it, you’re like, “Oh, God, Tom, no.”

Bruckheimer: They were 50 feet off the ground, it’s unbelievable. When the pilot got on the ground, he turned to Tom and said, “I’ll never do that again.” Tom pushes them. He said, “We’ve got to make this look real, we’ve got to do this right, it’s got to be a love letter to aviation. We’ve got to be able to make people feel what it’s like to be in one of these planes.”

Powell: The rules are not the rules, the accepted boundaries are not the accepted boundaries. He’s a guy that is constantly pushing everyone around them to do things they never thought were possible.

Barbaro: He really was an incredible resource. Not only did he design the entire aviation training course, but he also taught us how to make a film, how to study film. He would really look you in the eye, and talk to you, and make you feel heard.

LaRosa: There was one day where he came out of the parachute and helmet shop and passed me to the F-18. He was in his Maverick helmet and his full getup. I just remember looking at him going, “That’s Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell.” Instant goosebumps.

Davis: You’re like, “Wow, this is Maverick. This is the real life Maverick.”

Powell: Tom Cruise is Maverick.

Davis: What is Tom not good at? I remember I threw a pass to him [playing football] and he just went gunning. He took off down the sideline in the sand in jeans, and nobody was catching him. I was like “OK, I’m glad you’re on my team.”

Ramirez: I had just finished my last F-18 flight—we were doing a really intense sequence. We land, we’re in the briefing room, we show the footage. Tom is super excited. “Ah, you nailed it.” We’re all hyped. And then Tom’s like, “You heading back to L.A. today? Grab your bags.” So, Tarzan and I are flying back with Tom in his private jet. He’s like, “Yeah, I just bought this.” We land, and then he just jumps onto his motorcycle and hauls ass away. We’re like, “What the hell?” It was the most Hollywood thing I could have ever imagined.

Davis: He may seem intense, because what we’re doing is serious, but he’s a character.

Bruckheimer: I work with actors that can’t wait to go home. It’s so much fun when you have an actor like Tom who understands all this.

Powell: On this movie I’m doing next with Richard Linklater , Tom’s already given me notes on the script, how to build character. That level of TLC and the fact that I can actually call him a real friend … he’s not just bouncing after wrap, he’s really special.

Pullman: There was this moment where Tom brought us into his trailer to show us the first trailer of Top Gun: Maverick . I will always remember Glen Powell looking at Tom and sort of jokingly going, “Tom, you realize now the only way to top yourself is to shoot a movie in space.” Everyone was laughing. And with a sense of seriousness, Tom just nodded: “Yes, that’s true.” Like, this is what’s next for me, this is my duty . And I think he is going to space with Doug Liman .

Powell: You’ve got to watch saying things like that, because Tom will figure out a way to get there.

Part 5: “Welcome to the Skies.”

During the more than 10 months of shooting (and 800 hours’ worth of footage), Top Gun: Maverick pushed everyone’s technological, physical, and mental limits to the brink, creating an instant bond and camaraderie between the cast and crew.

LaRosa: It is no joke what they were doing every single day.

Kosinski: Nothing was easy on this film. We’d only get a few minutes of usable stuff every day, but it’s the only way to get what we got. That was the way it had to be done.

LaRosa: With practical aerial stunts and aerial cinematography, it’s a more visceral feel. You’re not watching a cartoon, you’re not looking at anything fake. You’re looking at something that actually happened. And that means something to people.

Bruckheimer: When the aerial stuff was done, that was my biggest relief. Machines can break, they can have problems. But the pilots were so terrific; the Navy was so great surrounding us with the best mechanics, best aviators—and the precautions that Tom took, which he always does, made sure our actors were all safe.

Barbaro: There was a scene we shot before we did all our pilot training. But after we learned how to become pilots, we apparently walked with more swagger. They were like, “Oh, you guys are walking differently, we have to go reshoot that scene.”

Davis: When you see us in the bar, those are some cocky mothersuckers in there. Why? Because we went through it.

Powell: I’m really proud to look back and go, “Wow, I accomplished way more than I ever thought was possible,” and it’s because of a guy like Tom, who has been pushing for 40 years.

Barbaro: It’s kind of incredible, we stay in touch all the time. Ten months after being in a particular character’s world, it takes a minute to shed that.

Kosinski: It was clear there was a natural chemistry there that got stronger as they went through the flight training and swim training—and the shoot itself.

Pullman: I definitely miss it. I miss going up there.

Powell: For Christmas, Tom gave all the young guns the iPad with ground school on it, and so we all had the opportunity to study it and pick it up.

Pullman: Everyone wants to continue their aviation journey in some sense or another.

Barbaro: I’m almost done with ground school. I’m kicking myself for not just doubling down during the pandemic, but I have every intention of doing it.

Powell: I started flying on my own, and Tom was with me every step of the way. After I got my private pilot’s license, there was a note waiting for me on the ground from Tom that said, “Welcome to the Skies.”

Davis: Tom got us skydiving lessons. Then we went through drifting lessons. Then weaponry training. Dirt bike lessons. I’ve done everything I can think of.

Pullman: I was craving those adrenaline spikes because there’s nothing like it.

Davis: There’s nothing I can say I’m afraid of. Maybe a bee. Other than that, I can do whatever the hell I want now.

Jake Kring-Schreifels is a sports and entertainment writer based in New York. His work has also appeared in Esquire.com, GQ.com, and The New York Times .

Trial Royale: Best Baseball Movie, Round 2—Minor Leagues

All’s fair in love and tennis, ‘deadpool & wolverine’ trailer, ‘shogun’ finale, and ‘x-men ’97’.

Did Tom Cruise Learn to Fly for 'Top Gun'? Here's What You Need to Know About the Aviation Buff

Apr. 21 2020, Updated 11:26 a.m. ET

Everyone's talking about the Top Gun: Maverick trailer and Tom Cruise flying jets in the highly anticipated movie sequel. Many people have been wondering if that's really Tom in the pilot's seat and if he learned to fly for the movie. Here's what you need to know.

Did Tom Cruise learn to fly for 'Top Gun'? The star is actually a real pilot! 

Tom fell in love with aviation while filming the original Top Gun , which was released in 1986. He got his private pilot's license in 1994 and has been active in the flying community ever since. In an interview with Wired , 

Tom confirmed he's a multi-engine instrument rated commercial pilot. That means you could legally hire him to fly you across the country, but we're guessing Tom's schedule is pretty booked up these days.

So is that really him flying the plane in Top Gun: Maverick? 

Yes and no. Tom loves to do his own stunts, and he is fully capable of flying a private plane — but some of the fighter jets in the Top Gun sequel can only be piloted by aviators with military experience. 

In 2018, Paramount confirmed (via Fighter Jets World ) that while Tom does fly "certain aircraft" in Top Gun: Maverick , he will not be flying the F/A-18 fighter jets. That's what editing and CGI are for!

View this post on Instagram Maverick is back. #TopGun A post shared by Tom Cruise (@tomcruise) on Jul 18, 2019 at 12:58pm PDT

Top Gun: Maverick is "a love letter to aviation." 

When introducing the Top Gun: Maverick trailer at Comic Con, Tom told Conan O'Brien the movie was "a love letter to aviation."

"The aerial footage is really beautiful," he said of the film. "I'm a pilot myself, and I love flying, and I love aviation." Tom said his dream, since he was a little kid, "was to make movies and to fly airplanes." With Top Gun: Maverick, he gets to do both on an epic scale. 

This isn't Tom's first flying movie. 

He portrayed real-life TWA pilot turned drug smuggler Barry Seal in the 2017 film American Made, and in 2018's Mission Impossible — Fallout, Tom pulled off a death-defying stunt in a helicopter. He actually got his helicopter pilot's license so he'd be able to fly the real choppers in the film .

"We're always flying from one place to another because Tom's needed in so many places," Mission Impossible — Fallout' s stunt director Wade Eastwood told Thrillist ,. "I would always fly the choppers because I love helicopters and I'm a pilot. Tom is a great pilot, fixed-wing, and he got really into helicopters because they are just cool." 

View this post on Instagram Over 100 jumps - we got it. A post shared by Tom Cruise (@tomcruise) on Jun 12, 2018 at 11:38am PDT

Putting an A-list movie star like Tom into these intense, high-flying scenes is high-risk and high reward, though. As Eastwood explained, "With Tom Cruise, I've got to make it as safe and as powerful and spectacular, but also if he's slightly damaged, we can't shoot anything else."

It's a good thing they're careful, because the world needs more Tom Cruise action movies. 

The New Top Gun: Maverick trailer looks awesome.

Paramount just released the new trailer for Maverick that spills the beans on a few more plot points. The trailer opens up with someone narrating the exploits of Tom Cruise's character to a bunch of new recruits that he's training. In the lineup is Goose's son, played by Miles Teller, who's rocking a mustache, just like his dad did in the first film.

Among his lauded characteristics is the fact that he was "one of the finest pilots" that the Top Gun "program has ever produced" and that his work is "legendary". We also learn that Maverick's been asked back to lead the program, despite the fact that even he admits he didn't think he'd be asked back.

What's really cool is that the soundtrack also seems to play heavily on '80s nostalgia.

There's some awesome synth lines blaring over epic-looking shots, and we're treated to a scene of Maverick wrecking the other pilots in a "dog-fighting" two-on-one match. We also see a glimpse of Jon Hamm, looking very concerned, and tempers flaring between new recruits. We also know that a big death occurs in the movie, as we catch yet another shot of Maverick saluting someone at the funeral.

Does Goose's son suffer the same fate as his father in the new movie? We're also treated to what looks like an aerial battle shot in snow-capped mountains. Will the new movie follow the same plot format as the first film? With a bunch of recruits rising about shallow disputes in a high-stakes, competitive environment, only to take their battle skills to a real-life combat scenario?

We will see when Top Gear: Maverick hits theaters on June 26th, 2020. Are you excited to see Tom Cruise back in action?

Why Does Justin Bieber Want to Fight Tom Cruise?

Are Nicole Kidman's Kids in 'Big Little Lies' Season 2?

Mom Forgets Baby at Airport and Other Reasons Pilots Turned the Plane Around

Latest Tom Cruise News and Updates

• ABOUT Distractify
• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Use
• CONNECT with Distractify
• Link to Facebook
• Link to Instagram
• Contact us by Email

Opt-out of personalized ads

© Copyright 2024 Distractify. Distractify is a registered trademark. All Rights Reserved. People may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.

Inside the Flight Training Program Tom Cruise Personally Designed for the Stars of Top Gun: Maverick

Welcome to what his costars call the "Tom Cruise School of Being a Badass.” Hope you brought a barf bag.

That's why Cruise personally developed a rigorous months-long flight training program, which Danny Ramirez dubbed “the Tom Cruise School of Being a Badass” for the cast of Top Gun: Maverick . He wanted to ensure that he and his costars would be able to actually fly their own F-18 jets through the sky to capture the movie's—what's the word?— intense flying sequences. So those scenes where the aviators all look like they're being pummeled to the edge of unconsciousness by G-forces? That's because they are. The movie's crew dabbed the actors' make-up, ensured they knew where the cameras over their cockpits were placed—and then they let 'em fly.

So Men's Health asked Paramount Pictures to give us a crash course in what the movie's cast had to endure for the most intense pre-production film prep ever. Here's what they provided:

The Overview

Top Gun: Maverick’s new aviators had to complete a comprehensive and demanding five-month flight training program devised, coordinated and overseen by Cruise himself, receiving approximately 34 to 36 hours of cumulative flight training each, and personalized nightly feedback from him on their progress. As per his instruction, Cruise’s students worked their way up from Cessna 172 Skyhawks, to Extra 300s, to the L-39 Albatross, to – finally – the F/A-18 Super Hornets.

The Syllabus

The ASTC (Aviation Survival Training Curriculum) that Tom Cruise and all the new aviators on Top Gun: Maverick had to complete to qualify for the extensive flying sequences included classrooms on topics including: Acceleration/G-Forces, Altitude Physiology, Reduced Oxygen Breathing Device Training, Aeromedical Aspects of Ejection, and Aviation Life Support Systems, before proceeding to Ejection Seat Trainer and Virtual Parachute Descent/ Parachute Landing Fall/ Lateral Drift Training.

Water Training

The course then moved to an outdoor pool, for more physically demanding training, such as survival stroke, survival gear inflation and underwater problem-solving. Methods included being rotated underwater in an ejection seat and being dragged across the pool attached to a parachute, from which students had to disentangle themselves.

Enduring G-Forces

When shooting the flying sequences, the actors often had to sustain up to eight Gs (potentially up to around 1,600 pounds of pressure on the body) and had to wear G-suits designed to prevent blackouts and G-LOC (a G-induced loss of consciousness).

Five real Navy bases were used as shooting locations in Top Gun: Maverick : Naval Air Station North in San Diego, Naval Air Station Lemoore in the Mojave Desert, the highly secretive Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in California’s Central Coast, Naval Air Station Fallon (the current home of the TOPGUN program, although North Island is depicted as ‘Fightertown USA’ in the film) in Nevada, and Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington State.

.css-1fpt53b{height:1.25rem;}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-1fpt53b{overflow:unset;line-height:1.25rem;}}@media(min-width: 48rem){.css-1fpt53b{line-height:1.25rem;}}.css-1fpt53b:before{background-color:#D2232E;color:#fff;margin-right:0.625rem;width:1.25rem;height:1.25rem;content:'';display:block;} Entertainment

That 'X-Men '97' Death Looked Pretty Final

Why Yabushige Is the Best Character on 'Shōgun'

We're Excited for These 2024 Non-Fiction Reads

Alan Ritchson Is Unsure Why Christians Love Trump

Don't Miss an Episode of 'X-Men '97'

'Invincible' Is Coming Back For Season 3

‘Invincible’ Is Back and Even Better In Season 2

The Complete Guide to Reading ‘Invincible’ Comics

FX's ‘Shōgun’ Is 10 Episodes of Pure Epic TV

Here’s Why Netflix’s ‘Ripley’ Is in Monochrome

Could ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Season 13 Happen?

• AviaTech Blog
• Aviation Career
• Airports Terminal
• Aircraft Seat Map

Does Tom Cruise have a pilot license?

When the world gazes upon Tom Cruise, they see more than a Hollywood titan, they witness a man who has ascended to the apex of cinematic glamour while equally soaring through the skies with the prowess of an adept pilot. Cruise’s aviation journey is not simply a hobby, but a testament to his unyielding commitment and fervor for flight.

This blog goes beyond movies to tell how a famous Hollywood star, Tom Cruise, became a skilled pilot. It explores his journey from learning to fly to mastering the controls of airplanes. Cruise’s transformation into a pilot reflects the intense roles he plays in movies, creating a real-life blend of his work and his passion for flying.

Table of Contents

Does tom cruise really have a pilot’s license.

Tom Cruise holds a valid pilot’s license. He obtained his private pilot’s license in 1994 and has also acquired a multi-engine instrument rating. This rating enables him to operate intricate aircraft in difficult weather conditions. Additionally, he possesses a helicopter license.

Does Tom Cruise have a fighter pilot license?

No, Tom Cruise is not qualified as a fighter pilot. Becoming a fighter pilot requires military training, which Cruise has not undergone. Despite being a licensed pilot and owning various aircraft, including a P-51 Mustang fighter plane, he lacks the military qualification necessary to legally operate a fighter jet such as an F-18.

With this short introduction, let’s explore the aviation journey of Tom Cruise.

Tom Cruise’s Aviation Journey

The sky’s the limit: tom cruise’s ascent to aerial excellence.

Ever wondered how Hollywood’s very own eternal heartthrob, Tom Cruise, managed to elevate his action-star status to stratospheric heights? In a world where appearances and first impressions can either catapult you to stardom or cast you into the shadows, Cruise has defied gravity, both in his career and quite literally. This is the story of how Cruise soared above and beyond to earn his wings, both on-screen and off.

Tom Cruise isn’t just an actor; he’s an icon whose dedication to the craft is as legendary as his ageless charisma. And of course, when you’re a celebrity of Cruise’s caliber, striving to offer an authentic experience to the audience isn’t just a desire—it’s a commitment. Exhibit A: When it comes to performing jaw-dropping stunts, Cruise doesn’t shy away from the driver’s seat, or in this case, the cockpit.

Cruise’s relationship with aviation took off while filming the original “Top Gun” in 1986—a film that would become synonymous with his name. But it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that he took the plunge and earned his private pilot’s license. Visualize this: Maverick himself, not content to let stunt pilots have all the fun, decided to master the skies for real.

However, it was the making of “Top Gun: Maverick” that saw Cruise elevating his piloting pursuits to new altitudes. To prepare for the sequel that took more than three decades to arrive, Cruise didn’t just rest on his laurels and past experiences. Instead, he took on the challenge of flying several types of aircraft, including the formidable P-51 Mustang and the heart-pounding, high-G adrenaline rush that is the F/A-18 Super Hornet.

With an undeniable commitment to authenticity, our very own silver-screen Maverick made sure he was more than just movie-qualified. He trained alongside Navy professionals, honing skills that would allow him to withstand extreme G-forces and perform complex aerial maneuvers. A testament to his dedication, Cruise ensured his flying was as cinematic and realistic as possible, eschewing the easy route of CGI.

The result? A breathtaking, visceral flight experience that transcends the screen and offers viewers a true-to-life exhibition of aerial expertise. Through Cruise’s lens, audiences worldwide can feel the thunderous roar of jet engines and the dizzying rush of the wild blue yonder.

Tom Cruise’s journey to earning his wings paints a vivid portrait of what relentless pursuit and passion for excellence can achieve. It stands as a mosaic of hard work, precision, and an unquenchable thirst for authenticity that resonates well beyond the world of cinema and deep into the essence of aspirational life choices.

Taking this leaf out of Cruise’s flight log, remember: that greatness truly lies beyond the confines of comfort zones. Onward and upward, in life, as in flight, let’s soar without limits.

A Celeb in the Cockpit: Safety and Skill

When the silver screen lights up with the latest blockbuster, few moments capture the heart-pounding excitement quite like a deftly executed aerial sequence. But when it comes to melding the high-octane thrills of flying with the dramatic flair of acting, does Tom Cruise truly soar as a pilot?

One might wonder if an actor, even with the magnitude of prestige that Cruise carries, can parallel the expertise of seasoned aviators. Well, hold onto your aviator sunglasses, because the evidence points to a resounding “yes.” After all, wouldn’t it be just like the star of some of the biggest action films to not only play the hero but to embody that role in real life?

Cruise isn’t simply a hobbyist when it comes to aviation; he’s a certifiable flying enthusiast who has invested substantial time into mastering the skies. Not only does he hold a pilot’s license , but he’s also the proud owner of a P-51 Mustang, a treasure among aviation aficionados. More than having the means to indulge in flying, Cruise possesses a deep-seated passion that fuels his quest for aeronautical prowess.

Add to this his ability to engage in fighter jet sprints and you have a Hollywood lead who doesn’t just play the part—he lives it. With “Top Gun: Maverick,” Cruise not only starred but flew in some of the most exhilarating sequences ever captured on film. This isn’t the work of a novice; this is the culmination of years spent dedicated to an art form both on land and in the clouds.

The rigorous training regime Cruise subjected himself to for “ Top Gun: Maverick ” wasn’t just about looking the part; he needed to embody it to the fullest. Flight training sessions that would make even seasoned pilots gulp became part of his daily routine. G-force training that pushes the body to its limits was embraced not only as a challenge but as a necessary step towards unparalleled authenticity.

Beyond the undeniable allure his name brings to box office tallies, Cruise’s piloting skills bring an added layer of credibility to his flying roles. When viewers watch him take to the skies on screen, they’re not witnessing the magic of CGI; they’re privy to the genuine skills of an actor who could easily switch the movie set for an airstrip.

In an era where audiences crave genuine experiences and authenticity, Cruise delivers. His flight craft is not just a spectacle for cinematic thrill but a testament to the dedication of a true artist. Indeed, Cruise has managed to chart a course not just as a legendary actor but also as a pilot whose skills are, quite literally, sky-high.

The next time you find yourself buckled in for a Tom Cruise film, rest assured the flying sequences are not just the magic of movie-making—they are the fruits of an artist’s labor, a symphony of skill and dedication that has taken to the skies. Cruise stands as a reminder that the pursuit of passion, whether in front of the camera or behind the cockpit, knows no bounds.

The Impacts of Cruise’s Flying on his Career

Elevating the Thrill: How Tom Cruise’s Love for Flying Soars in His Roles and Persona

In the high-stakes world of Hollywood, few actors manage to carve out a niche that resonates so deeply with their passions, but for Tom Cruise, the sky’s the limit. Cruise hasn’t just mastered the art of acting—he’s also the commander of the cockpit, and this duality has become a cornerstone of his storied career.

Melding his zeal for flying with his on-screen roles has allowed Cruise to bring a level of verisimilitude to his performances that is virtually unmatched. Not content with simulated thrills, his hands-on approach in the cockpit has added an unfiltered edge to his characters, shaping not just their narratives but their very essence.

Taking the reins as both actor and skilled pilot, Cruise infuses his Hollywood persona with an adrenaline-packed authenticity. He isn’t just playing a part; he embodies the daredevil spirit of his characters, setting a new standard for action stars. The roles he has sought and conquered echo his fervor for aviation, underscoring a seamless blend of his off-screen pursuits with his cinematic portrayals.

In embracing the danger and complexity of flying, Cruise does more than entertain; he inspires a sense of wonder and ambition. His dedication to piloting elevates his craft and accentuates his brand as an action icon who doesn’t just push boundaries—he soars beyond them.

Moreover, his commitment to aviation transcends the screen. Cruise isn’t just a Hollywood hero; he’s become an ambassador for aviation, promoting the discipline and passion that flying demands. He reinforces the notion that mastering the skies is not merely a stunt, but an art form—one that requires the same dedication and skill as a meticulously crafted performance.

With this high-flying dedication, Cruise redefines what it means to be a leading man in Tinseltown. He’s not simply playing parts; he’s redefining the action genre with every ticket sold. It’s no longer enough to look the part; credibility stems from being the part, from weaving real-life expertise into the fabric of film.

The influence of his piloting on Hollywood cannot be overstated. It’s a marriage of passion and profession that continues to captivate audiences worldwide, leaving indelible impressions and sparking aspirations in hearts and minds.

In the firmament of stars, Tom Cruise shines with a unique brilliance fortified by his dual love for acting and aviation. As the realm of cinema continues to evolve, it’s clear that those who bring genuine experience to their art not only thrill us but also ground their work in something tangibly real—an extraordinary feat that Tom Cruise seems to pull off with each gravity-defying take.

The saga of Tom Cruise, the celebrated pilot, is not just about a movie star with an unusual penchant for altitude. It encapsulates a compelling tale of a man whose life imitates his art in the most literal sense. With a pilot’s license tucked in his arsenal, Cruise has redefined what it means to perform action sequences, merging his off-screen exploits with his cinematic imagination.

His foray into aviation has allowed Cruise to chart a unique course in Hollywood, elevating his persona and contributing an unparalleled authenticity to roles that would otherwise require a stunt double. Through the clouds and above the glitter of the film industry, Cruise continues to navigate his career with the precision and grace of the very jets he pilots, ensuring his legacy reaches well beyond the confines of earthly fame.

RELATED ARTICLES MORE FROM AUTHOR

Inside Drake’s Boeing 767-200 Private Jet

Japan Airlines Flight 123: Worst Crash Ever

Follow us on.

• About AviaTech Channel
• Privacy Policy
• Terms and Conditions

Geeky Grizzly

All things Geeky!

Can Tom Cruise Really Fly a Plane IRL?

Wondering ‘Is Tom Cruise a pilot?’ after watching Top Gun Maverick? Read to find out how Tom Cruise learned to fly a plane and celebrities that can fly a plane.

With the release of Top Gun: Maverick, the highly-grossing sequel to Tom Cruise’s 1986 blockbuster Top Gun, there has been a lot of interest in his stunts in the movie. This movie, released in 2022, was a massive success and was widely praised for its realistic portrayal of fighter pilots. Intense stunts and daredevil action sequences have become a trademark of Cruise’s action movies, and his latest movie does not disappoint. 

The movie follows the story of  Pete Maverick Mitchell, a test pilot, and graduate of the United States Navy Strike Fighter Tactics Instructor program, popularly known as Top Gun. 

Cruise always advocated for realist portrayals in his movies and wanted the usage of CGI  to be as minimal as possible. He performs most of his stunts, and even at 60, Cruise is still trying out new things and fulfilling his passions. 

For Top Gun: Maverick, he ensured that all his co-actors were well acquainted with the workings of the aircraft and trained them himself. They also learned to film while working inside the planes, like Cruise had to do for a few of his previous movies.

The biggest question is, ‘Is Tom Cruise a pilot?’ The possibility of an actor having an aviation background can be unbelievable. However, for a movie star like Tom Cruise, who is constantly pushing the limits of his work, it’s not very hard. 

Can Tom Cruise Fly a Plane?

Yes, Tom Cruise can fly a plane. He has held a pilot license since 1994. Cruise got his private pilot’s license in 1994 and then obtained his commercial license in 1998.  

Although the US military did not let him fly the F/A-18 Super Hornet used in Top Gun: Maverick, he pilots the P-51 Mustang he owns. 

It was speculated that money had something to do with it. The aircraft costs nearly $70 million, which was half the movie’s budget. Due to this, giving insurance for such an expensive plane must have been beyond the producer’s limits.

Another reason could be that Tom Cruise did not necessarily have enough experience or skill to pilot that sophisticated fighter jet, which was risky. Trained Navy pilots performed all the scenes with the F/A-18. 

The P-51 Mustang, which belongs to Cruise, is seen in his appearance on James Corden’s The Late Late Show, where he takes Corden on two rides. Cruise’s level of aviation skills can be seen in this promotional video, as he easily maneuvers his P-51 Mustang and the Aero L-39 Albatros, borrowed from the Patriots Jet team. To be able to pilot such an aircraft, Tom Cruise must have over 1000 hours of jet flying experience.  

Along with his Mustang, Cruise also owns a Gulfstream IV G4 jet. This luxurious aircraft, estimated to cost around $35 million, has a seating capacity of 19 passengers and has an in-built jacuzzi and movie-screening facilities.

In an interview with Hello Magazine, Cruise told them, “All I ever wanted to be was a pilot or an actor, so Top Gun was a huge moment in so many respects, including my passion for aviation.” It is indeed quite amazing to see an actor finding the time and motivation to fulfill all his passions. 

Read More: What Is the Coldest Place in the Universe?

How Did They Fly a Plane in Top Gun: Maverick?

In the movie Top Gun: Maverick, the scenes with planes and flying were applauded for being highly realistic. Anybody would believe that the actors flew all the complicated aircraft and performed the stunts, but that is not true! 

It was not feasible to let inexperienced actors fly the Navy’s assets, like the F/A-18. All the actors flew as passengers with military pilots. However, they had to undergo intense training to work efficiently in those extreme conditions. Tom Cruise himself headed these sessions for his co-actors. They had to prepare well to increase their tolerance to fly without getting sick and prepare for emergencies.

 The team coordinated with the Navy to find the perfect spots to place their cameras inside the plane, which would not disrupt the plane’s navigation systems. The actors had to switch on the cameras themselves because of which, Joseph Kosinski, the director, could see the footage only after the planes returned to the ground. Moreover, the film’s aerial coordinator and camera pilot, Kevin LaRosa, helped them achieve this efficiently.

In an interview with the Men’s Journal , Miles Teller, who plays the role of Bradley “Rooster” Bradshaw, spoke about the extent to which the team went, to ensure that the film was portrayed realistically. 

“There is no green screen in a Top Gun movie. Every shot, every stunt, was the result of the work, the real sweat, that we all put into it. The production was over the course of a full year, which was definitely the longest shoot I have ever been a part of.” Miles Teller

Talking about his flying experience and training, the actor sounded quite excited. “They would have me go up in an F-18 for an hour or hour and a half, pulling anywhere around seven-and-a-half Gs. Getting to fly around with the best naval aviators in the world.”

The team also had to pass tests for all their training. Teller told them, “Before we got into the jets, we had to pass the Naval Aviation Survival Training course in San Diego.”

Which Movies Has Tom Cruise Flown a Plane In?

1. top gun: maverick (2022).

In his recent film, Top Gun: Maverick, we see Tom Cruise as a pilot, with his P-51 Mustang, and flying as a passenger in the F/A-18 Super Hornet. “I got to actually fly in an F-14 jet which was a dream come true, and play a character I loved in Maverick,” said Cruise about his experience while shooting for the movie. 

Cruise wanted to reduce using CGI as much as possible and ensured that all his co-actors were well acquainted with the aircraft. 

Top Gun: Maverick has also become instrumental in inspiring more young Americans to join the armed forces. The way the military has used films to exert their influence has always evoked a sense of patriotism and thrill and this movie is a perfect example of the same. The impact is an Instagram handle that recently posted about this. 

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Impact (@impact)

The actors had to film themselves flying in the airborne cockpits, and the director could see the video only after they reached the ground. A lot of training went into ensuring that the actors could handle it. Kevin LaRosa designed an extensive training program for the actors so they could act and maneuver the aircraft. Even though Cruise did not pilot the F/A-18, all that training he received was enough to make his acting as realistic as possible. 

In the original Top Gun(1986), Cruise did not do any flying. Professional navy pilots handled all the stunts and flying. Tom Cruise was either in the backseat of the fighter jet or in a set that mimicked a cockpit. Things changed a lot when the sequel came out in 2022. Cruise had a pilot’s license, and they trained the other actors too. 

2. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (2018)

Mission: Impossible Fallout had Cruise piloting a helicopter. He completed over 2000 hours of helicopter flying to be well-trained. That was a long and dangerous sequence in the movie, and some of the stunts could have resulted in Cruise’s death if the execution had not been perfect. 

In the same movie, Cruise also pulled off a HALO jump, the first ever to be done by an actor. He trained in a big, vertical wind tunnel. Cruise has over 100 hours of skydiving experience, and for this stunt, he jumped from over 20,000 feet and used a parachute at about 2000 feet. 

3. American Made (2017)

In American Made, Cruise hones his aviation skills in a few scenes. The movie follows the story of American pilot Barry Seal, played by Cruise, who transports drugs for the CIA. A controversy did arise from this movie’s set when two pilots died while another was severely injured. 

4. Mission: Impossible- Rogue Nation (2015)

Mission: Impossible- Rogue Nation, the fifth movie in this franchise, had Tom Cruise hang outside an Airbus A400M as it took off and completed the circuit. There were multiple retakes and Cruise was being supported by just a cord. His commitment to performing such stunts as realistically as possible is commendable. 

Read More: 5 Ways to Get Water Out of Charging Port

How Did Tom Cruise Learn to Fly a Plane?

Tom Cruise is a multi-engine, instrument-rated commercial pilot. He has a private and commercial pilot license. After the first Top Gun movie, he was motivated to undergo training to obtain his pilot license. In the first movie, Cruise could not handle the experience in the cockpit with the flight pilot and felt nauseous. Now, he can easily pilot the plane and perform complex maneuvers. 

Cruise must have hired a private instructor to train him. He owns a few planes as well, and he regularly practices and flies them. His first step was to obtain a private pilot’s license. 

The process of obtaining a private pilot license is not very complex. 

• After an orientation flight, the interested person can apply for a student pilot’s license. They should fulfill certain conditions – should be of the eligible age (14-16 years and above) and be well acquainted with English. 
• They should also have a medical form called Third Class Medical from an Aviation Medical Examiner(AME). After obtaining both these documents, the student should find a Certified Flight Instructor(CFI). Flight schools, flight training programs, or any certified person with an aircraft could teach you. After training, you should have a certain number of solo flight hours and other requirements . 
• The FAA conducts a written test before the check ride. After this, you will have your “check ride” with a Designated Pilot Examiner. This exam has two parts- oral and practical. You can find additional information regarding this procedure on the FAA website . 
• Based on the performance, the student will receive your PPL (Private Pilot’s License). Obtaining a commercial pilot’s license (after receiving your PPL) has almost the same procedure. 

Cruise has a multi-engine instrument rating. This rating involves more training and tests because the usual pilot’s license is for a single engine. Obtaining a multi-engine instrument rating requires more aeronautical knowledge and flight training. The student has to be prepared for any scenario or emergency, as the examiners will evaluate their ability to handle complex aircraft and face any situation that could arise. 

Tom Cruise should have followed the above-given processes to obtain his license. He also holds an aerobatic rating which helps him to perform all the stunts. 

He must have acquired his helicopter license the same way, and the process isn’t very different. Tom Cruise pushed to gain over 2000 hours of helicopter flying experience for his movie Mission: Impossible- Fallout. 

His expertise is evident when he performs complex maneuvers, in mountainous terrains, like the ‘corkscrew dive’ or the 360-degree downward spiral in Fallout. 

To use the kind of aircraft he pilots (like the Albatros), Tom Cruise must have a type rating, a high-performance endorsement, and more than 1000 hours of jet flying. Type rating essentially means the license to fly a specific model of aircraft. A high-performance endorsement allows the pilot to be the pilot-in-command of heavier and more complex aircraft. The FAA conducts additional training and tests for interested people. 

Read More: Essential Guide to Popping Pimples and Blackheads Safely

Who Are a Few Other Celebrities That Can Fly a Plane?

Many Hollywood celebrities own pilot licenses and, like Cruise, have fulfilled their aviation dreams. Some of them include the following:

• Angelina Jolie – Angelina Jolie is an award-winning actress and humanitarian who is also a pilot. She got her license in December 2004. Soon, she also bought a Cirrus SR22-G2, a single-engine plane. Her son Maddox was her inspiration to take up aviation, as he was interested in aviation at a young age. The actress has revealed that her son has taken up flying classes now. 
• Morgan Freeman – Along with being a renowned American actor and filmmaker, Morgan Freeman also nourishes a love for aviation. He loved war films and eventually received an opportunity to become a fighter pilot. However, Freeman realized his heart was more inclined towards acting and left the Air Force. His love for flying remained, and he got his license in 2002. He owns two planes – a Cessna Citation II and a Cessna 414. 
• Dennis Quaid – Known for his comedy and drama movies, Dennis Quaid, the American actor, is also a pilot. For the film The Right Stuff, Quaid overcame his fear of flying and learned the skill. He owns a Cessna 421 twin-engine and a Cessna Citation II and uses them frequently. 
• Clint Eastwood – Clint Eastwood is an American actor, musician, and politician. He finds himself on this list since he owns a pilot’s license. In an interview in 1997, Eastwood revealed that his favorite hobby is flying and has held a chopper license for a long time. He also owns an Aerospatial AStar helicopter.
• Kurt Russell – He is an American actor who also loves flying. He has owned a license for more than 28 years and has received the Aviation Mentor Award. He also possesses multiple aircraft and has several hours of flight experience.

How Difficult Is It to Become a Pilot?

Theoretically, it is not very difficult in the USA. If the person is eligible and has the time and resources to train themselves, becoming a pilot is quite accessible.

The entire process was explained in the article in detail earlier. However, several factors could make it difficult for people to pursue their aviation dreams. 

1. The Cost

Becoming a pilot is not a cheap affair. To obtain good training and to be able to practice sufficiently, you must have access to such resources. These can be very expensive. The minimum cost to acquire a private pilot’s license is nearly $7600. This rate could differ based on other factors, such as the student’s location and expertise.  

2. English Ability

The student should be able to read and comprehend English quite well. If this poses a problem for the student, it can be quite easily solved if the student is willing to take lessons for the same.

This is a requirement that migrants might find difficult to fulfill, but it won’t be too difficult to master the basics in a short period. 

3. Medical and Physical Fitness

A pilot needs to remain healthy. The student’s health conditions determine the eligibility for the license. Therefore, it is essential to ensure that you meet the health guidelines issued by the FAA.

For a private pilot’s license, you only require a third-class medical certificate, but for further certification, you need advanced medical certificates.

From the accounts of the actors who worked in Top Gun: Maverick, it is quite obvious that air sickness, tolerance, and breathing are the first major difficulties that new aviators face.

They had to regularly fly and remain in shape during the entire shoot. Hence, it is quite important for pilots to be healthy and have strong bodies.

4. Demanding Lifestyle

The lifestyle and working hours in a pilot’s career can be challenging. When you consider being a pilot as a career path, you would have to prioritize your professional life over your personal life to a large extent.

Frequent traveling and staying from home for extended periods would become the norm. This work-life balance is not everybody’s cup of tea, so you should consider this seriously before taking aviation as a career. 

If you are willing to put in time and effort consistently, it will not be too hard to become a pilot. Aviation enthusiasts who want to obtain a license for recreational purposes would not find the process challenging, especially after obtaining the license.

Discipline is required when it comes to the job, and you will have to sort out your priorities carefully. 

An actor, a multi-engine, instrument-rated commercial pilot, a producer, and so much more is what makes Tom Cruise such an exceptional inspiration. Even after crossing 50, he hasn’t slowed down or given in to the limitations imposed on you as you age. 

His dedication and drive to achieve what he wants are admirable. In a day and age in which anything is possible through CGI and editing, making the actor’s job much easier, Tom Cruise is an exception. It is quite enthralling to see an actor committed to giving maximum respect to the story and the action sequences. 

With the resources and wealth that Cruise amasses, he does find it easy to fulfill all his passions. Hard work and perseverance brought him to his present glory, and he never disappoints. Cruise’s dedication to becoming both the things that he always wanted to be, a pilot and an actor, is something we can all learn. 

The only limits are the ones we create for ourselves, and if we put our minds to them, we can achieve at least a few things we love and cherish. Becoming a pilot might sound like a scary path, but with the correct guidance, it is possible!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. Does Tom Cruise have a pilot’s license?

Yes, Tom Cruise has owned a pilot’s license since 1994. 

2. Is Tom Cruise a real pilot?

Yes, Tom Cruise is a multi-engine,instrument-rated commercial pilot and owns several planes. He owns a P-51 Mustang and a luxurious Gulfstream IV G4 jet. 

3. Is Tom Cruise a jet pilot?

Tom Cruise owns a pilot’s license that he uses for personal and professional needs. 

4. Is Tom Cruise a certified pilot?

Yes, Tom Cruise is a certified pilot and owns a license. He has a private as well as a commercial license. 

5. Is Tom Cruise a fighter pilot?

No, Tom Cruise is not a fighter pilot. He owns a private and commercial license but he does not work with the military. 

6. Is Tom Cruise a helicopter pilot?

Yes, he has a helicopter license as well. He had trained for more than 2000 hours for the helicopter flying scenes in Mission: Impossible- Fallout.

7. How much is Tom Cruise paid per movie?

At the beginning of his career, he was not paid hefty salaries. He received around $50,000 for one of his early movies, Taps. Gradually, he gained international fame and recognition. His roles in the first Top Gun movie and the romantic drama Jerry Maguire contributed to the same. 

Over the years, his paycheck has increased significantly. From the 1990s onwards, he has received almost $12 million to $100 million per movie through backend deals from his massively successful and profitable projects. 

Author: Ajeya

An avid blogger, meme compiler, quizzer and I'm always on the look-out for the latest trends on the internet, in tech and AI! View all posts by Ajeya

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

× Do you know these Musicians from their Movies?

How Many Pilot Licenses Does Tom Cruise Have

[ad_1] Tom Cruise is a well-known actor who has played many iconic roles in Hollywood movies. Aside from his acting skills, Cruise is also an accomplished pilot with multiple pilot licenses. Many people may not be aware of Cruise’s passion for flying, but it is a significant part of his life outside of acting. In this article, we will delve into the world of Tom Cruise’s pilot licenses and explore some interesting facts about his flying career.

1. How Many Pilot Licenses Does Tom Cruise Have?

Tom Cruise holds a total of three pilot licenses. He has a private pilot license, an instrument rating, and a commercial pilot license. These licenses allow him to fly different types of aircraft and perform various maneuvers in the air.

2. Private Pilot License

A private pilot license (PPL) is the most basic type of pilot license. It allows the holder to fly for pleasure or personal reasons, but not for compensation or hire. With a PPL, Cruise can fly single-engine aircraft and carry passengers, as long as he is not being paid for his services.

3. Instrument Rating

An instrument rating is an additional qualification that allows pilots to fly in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). This means that the pilot can navigate and control the aircraft using only the instruments on the dashboard, without relying on visual cues outside the cockpit. This is a crucial skill for flying in poor weather conditions or at night.

4. Commercial Pilot License

A commercial pilot license (CPL) is the highest level of pilot license that Cruise holds. With a CPL, he can fly for compensation or hire, which means he could potentially work as a professional pilot if he desired. This license requires more training and experience than a PPL, and it allows the holder to fly larger and more complex aircraft.

5. Flying Experience

Tom Cruise has been flying for many years and has accumulated a significant amount of flying experience. He has flown various types of aircraft, including helicopters and fighter jets. Cruise’s dedication to flying is evident in the time and effort he has put into honing his skills as a pilot.

6. Passion for Aviation

Cruise’s passion for aviation is well-known among his fans and colleagues in Hollywood. He has spoken about his love of flying in interviews and has even incorporated his flying skills into some of his movie roles. Cruise’s dedication to aviation is a testament to his commitment to mastering new skills and pursuing his interests outside of acting.

7. Ownership of Aircraft

In addition to holding multiple pilot licenses, Tom Cruise also owns several aircraft. He is the proud owner of a P-51 Mustang fighter plane, which is a vintage aircraft that he has restored and customized to his liking. Cruise’s ownership of this historic aircraft reflects his deep appreciation for aviation history and his love of flying.

8. Flight Training

To obtain his pilot licenses, Tom Cruise underwent extensive flight training and passed rigorous exams to demonstrate his knowledge and skills as a pilot. He trained with experienced flight instructors and logged many hours of flight time to meet the requirements for each license. Cruise’s dedication to his training is a testament to his commitment to excellence in all of his pursuits.

9. Flying Adventures

Tom Cruise has embarked on many flying adventures over the years, exploring different destinations and experiencing the thrill of flight from the cockpit of his aircraft. His passion for flying has taken him to new heights, both literally and figuratively, as he continues to push the boundaries of what is possible in the air. Cruise’s flying adventures are a testament to his adventurous spirit and his love of exploring the world from a different perspective.

In summary, Tom Cruise is not only a talented actor but also an accomplished pilot with multiple pilot licenses. His passion for aviation is evident in his dedication to flying and his ownership of aircraft. Cruise’s flying adventures and his commitment to mastering new skills as a pilot are a reflection of his adventurous spirit and his love of exploring the world from the cockpit of an aircraft. Tom Cruise’s flying career is a fascinating aspect of his life that showcases his passion for aviation and his determination to excel in all of his pursuits.

Common Questions about Tom Cruise’s Pilot Licenses:

1. When did Tom Cruise start flying?

Tom Cruise began flying in the 1990s and has been a licensed pilot for many years.

2. How many pilot licenses does Tom Cruise have?

Cruise holds three pilot licenses: a private pilot license, an instrument rating, and a commercial pilot license.

3. What types of aircraft can Tom Cruise fly?

With his pilot licenses, Cruise can fly single-engine aircraft, helicopters, and even fighter jets.

4. Does Tom Cruise own any aircraft?

Yes, Cruise owns a P-51 Mustang fighter plane, which he has restored and customized to his liking.

5. Has Tom Cruise ever flown in any movies?

Yes, Cruise has incorporated his flying skills into some of his movie roles, including in the film “Top Gun.”

6. How much flight training did Tom Cruise undergo to obtain his pilot licenses?

Cruise underwent extensive flight training and logged many hours of flight time to meet the requirements for each license.

7. What is the significance of having an instrument rating as a pilot?

An instrument rating allows pilots to fly in poor weather conditions or at night, using only the instruments on the dashboard for navigation and control.

8. Can Tom Cruise fly for compensation or hire with his commercial pilot license?

Yes, with his commercial pilot license, Cruise can fly for compensation or hire, potentially working as a professional pilot if he desired.

9. What has Tom Cruise said about his passion for flying?

Cruise has spoken about his love of flying in interviews, expressing his passion for aviation and his dedication to mastering new skills as a pilot.

10. Has Tom Cruise ever had any flying accidents?

There have been no reports of Tom Cruise being involved in any flying accidents or incidents.

11. What kind of aircraft does Tom Cruise fly most often?

Cruise is known to fly his P-51 Mustang fighter plane, as well as other single-engine aircraft and helicopters.

12. Does Tom Cruise have any future plans related to flying?

Cruise has not publicly disclosed any specific future plans related to his flying career, but his passion for aviation is likely to continue.

13. How does Tom Cruise balance his acting career with his flying hobby?

Cruise has managed to balance his acting career with his flying hobby by dedicating time to both pursuits and prioritizing his interests outside of acting.

14. What role has flying played in Tom Cruise’s life?

Flying has been a significant part of Cruise’s life, providing him with a sense of adventure and a new perspective on the world.

15. How has Tom Cruise’s flying career influenced his movie roles?

Cruise’s flying skills have influenced some of his movie roles, such as in “Top Gun,” where he portrayed a skilled fighter pilot.

16. What challenges has Tom Cruise faced in his flying career?

Cruise has faced challenges in obtaining his pilot licenses and maintaining his flying skills, but his dedication to aviation has helped him overcome these obstacles.

17. What advice would Tom Cruise give to aspiring pilots?

Cruise would likely encourage aspiring pilots to pursue their passion for flying and to never stop learning and improving their skills as pilots.

In conclusion, Tom Cruise’s pilot licenses are a testament to his dedication to aviation and his love of flying. His flying adventures and ownership of aircraft reflect his passion for exploring the world from the cockpit of an aircraft. Cruise’s flying career is a fascinating aspect of his life that showcases his adventurous spirit and his commitment to excellence in all of his pursuits. [ad_2]

Related Posts:

• The Inventory

Support Quartz

Fund next-gen business journalism with $10 a month

Free Newsletters

Tom Cruise became an expert helicopter pilot just to film one stunt in “Mission: Impossible”

The swashbuckling Tom Cruise has one-upped himself yet again. The Hollywood actor learned how to fly a helicopter specifically so that he could risk his life filming a stunt in the upcoming  Mission: Impossible  sequel, a behind-the-scenes video for the film revealed.

Cruise, 55, earned his pilot’s license in 1994 and has since turned into one of Hollywood’s biggest flying enthusiasts—a hobby he has demonstrated on screen in films like American Made . The star, whose breakthrough role was as a pilot in 1986’s Top Gun , flies planes so often that the US environmental lobby nicknamed him “ Emissions Impossible .” Cruise owns a number of expensive private jets, one of which he was rumored to use to pick up groceries for his then wife, actress Katie Holmes. (Cruise has never publicly denied the rumor.)

But he didn’t have as much experience with helicopters—until  Mission: Impossible – Fallout  came along. The sixth installment in the popular action spy series required that Cruise not only learn how to fly a helicopter, but also become something of an expert helicopter pilot so that he could perform an extremely dangerous stunt on his own.

It’s unclear if the script necessitated that Cruise become a master pilot, or if the actor simply wanted to be one and then decided to use his new skills in the film. In this age of CGI technology and stunt doubles, we’re assuming the latter.

“Flying a helicopter takes a lot of skill,” said Marc Wolff, aerial coordinator for the film. “To put someone like Tom into a situation like this is almost impossible to imagine.” (The italicized emphasis is our own—you see what he did there?)

According to Randy Hepner, an aerial assistant on  Mission: Impossible – Fallout , Cruise accrued 2,000 flying hours in a very short period of time to get up to speed. Normally, pilots would need to train eight hours per day for at least three months just to become a novice pilot. But Cruise needed to be more than a novice pilot: He needed to perform a 360-degree downward spiral maneuver in mountainous terrain.

“Most pilots wouldn’t attempt this,” one stunt coordinator says in the video. “You make a mistake, somebody’s going to die from it,” another adds.

And that’s where the behind-the-scenes clip goes from absolutely incredible to distasteful. On Cruise’s last film,  American Made  (for which he performed his own plane stunts ), two stunt pilots  did  die in a plane crash, in the Colombian Andes outside Medellin, after production wrapped. The families of the two pilots are now suing the producers of the film , alleging that they ignored safety procedures and cut corners to save time and money.

Cruise was not directly involved in the accident, but the lawsuit blames him and director Doug Liman for pushing the limits on set and contributing to an unsafe environment in which an accident might occur. Tom Cruise involved in risky business? Never!

📬 Sign up for the Daily Brief

Our free, fast, and fun briefing on the global economy, delivered every weekday morning.

Screen Rant

Top gun 2: why tom cruise wasn't allowed to fly an f-18 fighter jet.

Although he pilots several different aircraft in Top Gun: Maverick, Tom Cruise was denied clearance by the U.S. Navy to fly the F-18 jet.

• Tom Cruise insisted on prioritizing practical effects over CGI in Top Gun: Maverick , adding authenticity to the aerial action.
• Cruise originally wanted to fly a real Boeing F-18 fighter jet in the film, but the US Navy denied his request due to insurance concerns and the high cost of the plane.
• Cruise's dedication to doing his own stunts enhances the storytelling and creates a level of authenticity that can't be achieved in any other way.

Given the actor's reputation for wild stunts, it's not surprising that many viewers were wondering did Tom Cruise actually fly in T op Gun: Maverick . Joseph Kosinski's sequel has surpassed the original 1986 Top Gun with its box office success and a Best Picture nomination. Much of this has to do with how the movie prioritized practical effects over CGI, adding authenticity to the aerial action. That said, while it's no secret that Tom Cruise does his own stunts a lot, some of the tricks proposed for Top Gun: Maverick were a little too ambitious, even by Cruise's standards.

When it came to the long-awaited sequel, Cruise signed on for the project only with the assurance that the film's effects would not be reliant on CGI. Cruise was so ambitious, in fact, that he had initially hoped to fly a real Boeing F-18 fighter jet. A certified pilot, Top Gun: Maverick's Cruise is well-accustomed to high-octane aviation stunts . Many Cruise fans will already be aware that many of the more impressive helicopter stunts in 2018's Mission: Impossible - Fallout were performed by Cruise. However, Bruckheimer maintains that the US Navy ultimately denied Cruise's requests to fly the Super Hornet, which boasts a price tag in excess of $70 million.

How Fast Is Mach 10? What Speed Maverick Travels In Top Gun 2

Why it’s sensible that tom cruise wasn’t allowed to fly a fighter jet, the navy denied his application.

The Super Hornet jet does feature in the sequel, but Tom Cruise did not fly them in Top Gun: Maverick as those scenes were all completed with assistance from Navy pilots. According to producer Bruckheimer, Cruise does fly a P-51 propeller-driven fighter plane, as well as some helicopters. With the assistance of skilled editing, the action sequences are convincing to even the best-trained eye.

There's no confirmation about why the US Navy might have denied Cruise's aspirations to pilot a Super Hornet , even though the actor has experience flying Top Gun 's supersonic military aircraft . However, the most logical reason would be insurance concerns, which is always enough of a consideration to prevent actors from doing their own stunts.

The cost of the plane also figures into this – a real F-18 Super Hornet would make up roughly half of Top Gun: Maverick 's $152 million budget. That would be likely to create logistical nightmares for the insurance of the film. That's not even to mention insuring Cruise himself, who, though already a certified pilot, may not have the specific training required to fly the F-18 safely.

Insurance woes aside, should an inexperienced pilot such as Cruise lose control of a high-speed aircraft, it could also mean peril for civilians and/or military personnel on the ground. Besides, while Tom Cruise does his own stunts to great effect, the real Navy pilots in Top Gun: Maverick 's brought more than enough authenticity to the sequel.

Top Gun 2: All 6 Jet Fighter Planes That Appear In Maverick

Why does tom cruise like to do his own stunts, a passion for story telling is why tom cruise doesn't use stunt doubles much.

The real reason why Tom Cruise does his own stunts is simple: it's the best way to tell whatever story is at hand . In the actor's own words, “It has to do with storytelling… It allows us to put cameras in places that you’re not normally able to do.” Indeed, if the lead actor in an action movie is able to physically perform the character's stunts, this removes the necessity to shoot from strange angles or use editing tricks to make dangerous scenes appear real. This ultimately translates to smoother action sequences and scenes closer to the writer, stunt coordinator, and director's vision.

Moreover, whenever Cruise puts himself in danger for a risky stunt, everyone involved - from the film crew to the audience - is much more invested in the results, a level of authenticity that simply can't be achieved in any other way. Outside of the Top Gun series, this stunning effect can also be observed in the stunt-filled Mission Impossible franchise .

The F/A-18 Super Hornet Requires An Advanced Pilot

The aircraft in top gun: maverick are among the hardest to fly.

While Tom Cruise did really fly in Top Gun: Maverick with certain aircraft, confirming his exceptional pilot skills, the F/A-18 Super Hornets are not the kind of plane just anyone can jump into and take off . It requires specially trained pilots to operate these aircraft given their immense power and the danger involved. Some of the impressive specifics about the plane (via: Military.com ) include its maximum speed of 1,190 mph and the ability to climb 45,000 ft per minute. Such power is needed as the Super Hornets have a 30,500 lb weight while empty which can increase to 66,000 lbs with its maximum weapons load.

It seems as though Tom Cruise will do anything for his stunts , and that likely includes the necessary training to handle an aircraft like this. However, even if he was denied that opportunity, the Super Hornets didn't come at a discounted price. It was reported (via Bloomberg ) that the movie r ented the Super Hornets from the U.S. Navy for over $11,000 an hour . However, given that Top Gun: Maverick more than surpassed box office expectations, it seems as though it was a price worth paying.

How Much Of Top Gun 2 Is Real & How Much Is CGI

Tom cruise’s wildest stunt, top gun: maverick isn't his most dangerous filming experience.

By Tom Cruise's own reckoning, the wildest and most dangerous stunt he's ever performed is when he hung on to a moving plane in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation , the fifth movie in the MI series. Not surprisingly, for Tom Cruise, flying a Super Hornet would qualify as a less dangerous stunt, as that would have at least required the actor to be inside the plane. Although Cruise was harnessed to the plane in Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation , no amount of safety precautions could account for all the inherent dangers involved with a person wearing virtually no protection while hanging onto a moving aircraft. This just goes to show the level of sheer dedication Cruise brings to his movie projects.

However, recently Cruise has suggested a new stunt in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 might be his wildest stunt yet, which involves Cruise jumping a motorcycle off of a cliff and then parachuting to safety. It is a stunt that took years of planning and training to get right and promises to be another spectacle from the dedicated actor. Clearly, even if Tom Cruise didn't really fly the F-18s in Top Gun: Maverick , he is not slowing down at all when it comes to his onscreen stunts.

Top Gun: Maverick

Is Tom Cruise A Pilot?

Following the release of the official trailer of the most anticipated aviation movie of the year, Top Gun: Maverick , the questions on everyone’s lips have been: Is Tom Cruise a pilot? Did he learn how to fly a jet just to bring the character, Captain Maverick , to life? We all know that the veteran actor and movie producer is capable of doing so many things only in his movies but is flying a jet something he can do off our TV screens? 

Yes, Tom Cruise is a pilot. You could book him to fly you around if he were not busy being someone else on set all the time. The actor enjoys flying, and thanks to his acting career, he has had the privilege of occasionally flying on set. Here’s what you need to know about his aviation skills. 

Getting A Private Pilot’s License

When you play pretend for a living, it’s possible to enjoy being a character and wish you could live like this character. Viewers fall in love with the different versions of Tom Cruise that have come across their screens. Well, Tom also thoroughly enjoyed his role in the original Top Gun Movie released in 1986 . The movie was a hit. It changed people’s perception of the military, as many Americans voluntarily enlisted in the army . For everyone nursing the idea of becoming an aviator, this movie was enough inspiration to chase that dream. 

The same can be said about the award-winning actor as he fell in love with aviation while filming this movie and sealed his passion for aviation by getting a private pilot’s license in 1994, Before the movie, Tom had no flying experience. It was reported that when he got in the cockpit of a real F-14, he could not survive the maneuvers by the flight pilot and quickly reached for a sick bag. 

However, the star felt less airsick as time went by. His nausea was quickly replaced with a love for flying and a desire to become a pilot . This spurred him to undergo training and get his pilot’s license in 1994 . Speaking to Wired, Tom admits that he is a multi-engine instrument rated commercial pilot. In his words, “ Yes, I can fly a plane .” 

How Tall Is Tom Cruise? Exact Height Revealed

What is tom cruise’s daily routine, where does tom cruise live.

Flying Maverick

The sequel to the first Top Gun movie , Top Gun: Maverick, is set to hit our screens on December 23, 2020 . The film has been delayed unavoidably, keeping fans sick with suspense. However, Tom Cruise, who is clearly excited about the movie, shares some lovely video clips to whet his fans’ appetite. What’s torturing is that we get to see a clip of Tom flying. He shared a video of himself flying on Twitter with the caption: Warning: Real flying. Real g-forces may make you puke. #TopGun

Warning: Real flying. Real g-forces. May make you puke. #TopGun pic.twitter.com/CRjROgOvwd — Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) December 18, 2019

The video shows an excited Tom Cruise flying, and some members of the crew talk about how the flying scenes were shot. This time, Tom’s alone in the cockpit, and he is killing it without feeling airsick. However, Tom Cruise does not fly all the fighter jets in the movie. Paramount Pictures stated that he will not be flying the F/A-18 fighter jets.

Tom Cruise Spreads The Flying Bug

Tom’s love for flying can be contagious. He has had a swell time combining two things he loves – acting and flying. That’s sheer luck as only a few people get to combine their hobby with their profession. Tom is so excited about flying, and he shares his excitement with his fans when he tweets: see you in the sky . 

See you in the sky. #TopGun pic.twitter.com/vdhTtXb0io — Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) December 16, 2019

Tom also encourages others to pursue this passion. His co-star, Glen Powell , shared that Tom Cruise paid for his flight school training school . The gift came in an iPad with lessons already downloaded. The star revealed this in an Instagram post of a video of him and his flight instructor. 

View this post on Instagram ✅Pilot’s License✅ Try not falling in love with aviation after living out every pilot’s dream while shooting @topgunmovie. Especially when you see the way @tomcruise flexes it. After wrapping a shooting day, Tom would rocket off into the sunset in his P-51 while I would limply shuffle into the cast van. The wings were just so much cooler than the wheels…and for Christmas, Tom bought me an iPad with my flight school downloaded and prepaid. And yesterday, after months of flying, studying, and testing…I’m the real deal. This is a video of me after my first solo flight. It’s a tradition in the aviation community for your instructor to tear away your shirt signifying that teacher’s finally “off your back.” My instructor @wallysaygers is just following ceremony, he doesn’t rip off my clothes after every flight. Thank you Walt for being my sky shepherd, thank you Shane for making my @corsair_aviation experience effortless, and thank you Tom for being my hype man every step of the way. If you’re looking for me, look ☝? A post shared by Glen Powell (@glenpowell) on Mar 10, 2020 at 4:50pm PDT

Tom is not just a pilot, he loves flying and shares this passion with everyone through his movies and personally.

• Celebrity Name List (A-Z)
• Privacy Policy

© 2020 Black Sands Media - All Rights Reserved

• Celebrity List
• LuxuryViewer

13 Celebs Who Have Their Pilot's License (12 Who Own Private Jets)

Any D-list reality star can get a Bentley, but you know you really made it when you've got your own jet

If you want to be a pilot, it doesn’t matter how rich and famous you are, you have to put the hours of training in. Celebrities who want to get a pilot’s license have to go through the same rigorous process that anyone else has to, but for those well known faces who have caught the flying bug, it clearly seems worth the time and effort.

From action stars like Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise, to country music stars and supermodels, there are a surprising number of celebs who’ve decided to obtain their pilot’s licence, and some have even bought their own aircraft to go with it.

Other A-listers, however, are purely in it for comfort and have zero interest in piloting a plane themselves - that’s what they pay other people for, darling. And there is not a more relaxing and comfortable way to travel than by private jet, especially when it’s your own plane, decked out just as you like it.

Endless queues, unnecessary delays, annoying passengers, lack of privacy and little leg room are some of the discomforts that plague us when we fly commercial. For the super rich and famous, there’s an easy solution: buy your own aircraft.

These days, cars and houses aren't the status symbol they used to be. Any D-list reality star can get a Bentley, but you know you really made it when you've got your own jet.

So read our list and find out which celebrities are simply nuts for aviation, and which have bagged themselves the ultimate status symbol.

25 25. He Knows The Rules Of Flight Club: Brad Pitt

Word is that Brad Pitt is an accomplished pilot and in addition to having mastered the more common or garden aircraft, he bought a WWII-era Supermarine Spitfire for $3.3 million. Apparently his fascination with vintage planes was inspired by Fury, the WWII  action film he shot in the UK in 2013. According to The Daily Mail, the star undertook certified training at the Boultbee Flight Academy in Oxford, where he learned how to operate the Spitfire’s unique controls.

But it’s not just vintage craft that Pitt is rumoured to fly. According to Business Insider, his former wife, Angelina Jolie, reportedly purchased a $1.6 million helicopter, as well as flying lessons, as a gift for the actor. Let’s hope Pitt’s love of flying has outlasted their marriage.

24 24. The Best Pilot In The Galaxy: Harrison Ford

Harrison Ford is more than just a hugely successful actor, he is also a highly experienced pilot of more than 20 years, and has logged more than 5,000 hours in the air, according to ABC News . But like his Han Solo alter ego, Ford's career in the air has not been without incident.

Ford was hurt in a 2015 accident when the WWII-era plane he was flying crashed on a golf course near Santa Monica, California. A few years later in 2017, the Star Wars star was landing a small plane at John Wayne Airport in Orange County when he flew over an American Airlines 737 aircraft bound for Dallas-Ft. Worth. Luckily, there were no injuries and the Federal Aviation Association saw no need to take official action against the actor.

23 23. Top Gun Of The Sky: Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise played the elite naval fighter jet pilot “Maverick” in the blockbuster movie Top Gun, and he now indulges his real love for flying in his own Gulfstream IV, one of the finest celebrity private jets around.

Rumoured to be worth an estimated $36 million, the jet accommodates up to 19 passengers and enjoys state-of-the-art furnishings - and we wouldn’t expect any less from the Mission Impossible star.

Known for his love of stunts and action, it’s no surprise Cruise is also a qualified helicopter pilot, according to People .

22 22. Grease Lightning: John Travolta

He’s the star of 70’s cult movies Grease and Saturday Night Fever, but John Travolta is also an honorary pilot for the Australian aircraft company Qantas.

The guy is a bonafide aviation enthusiast with five private planes total, which he parks on his front lawn. Yes, you read that right: he parks airplanes outside of his house.

Travolta was one of the first people to purchase land in the uber-exclusive Jumbolair Aviation Estates , and has two runways that lead directly to his front door. That’s dedication.

21 21. More Than Meets The Eye: Brazilian Supermodel Gisele Bundchen

She’s a supermodel, a spokesperson for the United Nations, the wife of New England Patriots QB Tom Brady, and a helicopter pilot.

According to People , Bundchen learnt to fly a helicopter while six months pregnant, which is almost as impressive as her motivation behind the lessons. Allegedly, she wanted to learn the nuts and bolts of aviation for her role as a goodwill ambassador for the UN’s Environmental Programme, which is researching alternative sources of jet fuel. Proof, if needed, that she's not just a pretty face.

20 20. When It Comes To Aviation, Just Ask Dr. Phil

Dr. Phil McGraw, better known to the general TV-watching public as Dr Phil, is not only a qualified psychologist and a go-to guy for all your emotional problems, but he’s also a pilot.

Dr Phil has a private pilot certificate and an instrument rating, according to Airliners , making him one of the few celebrities who has gotten the more challenging IFR rating in order to be able to fly in the clouds. An instrument pilot can legally fly in the clouds, rain, and fog, which broadens his abilities and keeps him in the air instead of on the ground during inclement weather.

19 19. Dirty Harry Knows His Planes: Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood has been a licensed helicopter pilot for almost 30 years and admitted in a 1997 60 Minutes interview that flying is his favourite hobby: “You’re just a number in the sky. Everybody pretty much leaves you alone. Charlie Xray or 71 Romeo Papa. Every plane is just an ID,” he told presenter Steve Kroft.

It’s amazing he still flies at all, after an aviation accident he experienced in The Korean War. According to The Hollywood Reporter , Eastwood was a 21-year-old draftee when his plane went down. He was the only passenger in a Douglas AD torpedo bomber, flying in severe weather off the coast of Northern California, when the pilot told him they were going to attempt an emergency landing in the shark-infested waters off Point Reyes. That would have put us off flying for life.

18 18. A Real Life Action Woman: Angelina Jolie

According to People , Oscar-winning Jolie was first inspired to take to the skies by son Maddox, who was obsessed with aircraft at a young age. After a slew of lessons, she gained her private pilot’s licence in 2004 and has been flying regularly ever since.

She is most often seen flying small turboprop aircraft including the Cirrus SR22, one of the safest single-engine planes, and a Cessna 208 Grand Caravan, which she owns.

17 17. Escape From Terra Firma: Kurt Russell

Kurt Russell says flying runs in the blood, as his grandfather had one of the first float planes in Maine, and although now he says he can’t live without flying, he admits it took him a while to learn.

“The love of airplane for pilots, I think, is almost inexplicable. It’s the experience itself. It’s the fact that you can’t explain it, I think, that makes you feel the way you do about it. This is something that can change your life,” he told one interviewer.

The Hateful Eight star was, in fact, the pilot who first reported the Phoenix Lights phenomenon. Every UFO obsessive knows about the Phoenix Lights, a mass sighting that took place in 1997, which has since become one of the best-known UFO incidents.

16 16. The Voice Of God Can Fly: Morgan Freeman

Although he joined the Air Force as a mechanic, Morgan Freeman didn't learn to fly until he was 65 years old. According to Fox News, Freeman owns a Cessna 414 and a Citation 501, but the aviation item on his bucket list is a Sino Swearingen SJ30 business jet, which costs a whopping $6.9 million.

The actor has also learnt his recognisable voice to marketing materials for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.

15 15. Metal Hurtling Through The Sky: Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson

After finding massive success as the lead singer of Iron Maiden, Bruce Dickinson learned to fly recreationally in Florida in the 1990s, and later became certified as an airline transport pilot, the highest license possible, which requires at least 1,500 hours of flying experience. According to Pilotweb , he even flew Boeing 757s as captain for the now-defunct UK charter airline Astraeus.

He has since aided in the return of 200 UK citizens from Lebanon during the 2006 Israel/Hezbollah conflict, rescued 180 stranded vacationers from Egypt after the collapse of XL Airways UK in September 2008, and returned a group of British RAF pilots home from Afghanistan later that year. Dickinson has also flown his Iron Maiden bandmates on the group’s tours.

14 14. He Was A Pilot Before He Was A Musician: Kris Kristofferson

In the 60s, this country musician was an Army helicopter pilot and later worked as a commercial pilot at Petroleum Helicopters International (PHI). But music was the only industry in which the star wanted to soar, and frustrated with his inability to get Johnny Cash to record one of his songs, he eventually took a bold route.

According to Rolling Stone , he landed a copter in Cash’s front yard: "He had beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other," Cash apparently said, though Kristofferson countered: "I said, 'John, you’ve got to have both hands and both feet when you’re flying a helicopter.'"

13 13. Scrubs Star Zach Braff

After developing a fear of flying as an adult, actor Zach Braff conquered his phobia by learning to fly. He honed his skills at Mach 1 Aviation in Van Nuys, California, behind the controls of a Cirrus SR-20, and received his pilot’s license in November 2008. Braff admits taking control of an aircraft helps "calm" his nerves, and told Britain’s Elle magazine, "I got into it because I'd become a really nervous flyer and I thought understanding how everything works would calm me down - now I'm hooked.

"It quiets your mind; when you are someone who thinks a lot and your brain is going non-stop, it has to become still so you can focus.”

12 12. They Own It: Beyonce and Jay-Z - A Luxurious Bombardier Challenger 850 Learjet

This luxurious private jet, owned by Jay Z and his wife Beyonce, is complete with a living room decked out entirely in leather. Naturally. The plane can also accommodate several people, which is just as well considering and their family is often aboard, including their three young children, plus entourage.

According to The Telegraph, the plane was a $40 million birthday present from Beyonce to her husband. He might have 99 problems, but disappointing gifts clearly aren’t one of them.

11 11. They Own It: Bill Gates - A Techy Global 5000

As co-founder and chairman of Microsoft Corporation, and one of the most recognised billionaires on the planet, it’s no surprise Bill Gates has his own jet. This renowned philanthropist has to travel a lot and for this he has at his disposal one of the best luxury private jets in the world, a Bombardier BD-700 Global Express.

This magnificent aircraft, also known as the Global 5000, carries the best of aviation technology and opulent luxury.

10 10. They Own It: Celine Dion - A Speedy Bombardier BD-700 Express

The Canadian singer has been rated as one of the richest singers in the world over the years, and thanks to her iconic hits, her net worth is reported to be worth a staggering £330 million, according to Forbes. So it stands to reason she should have a private jet. It’s not just any private jet, either.

She owns a Bombardier BD-700 Express, which costs a reported $42 million - a drop in the ocean when you have that kind of money.

9 9. They Own It: Jim Carrey - A Safety-Intensive Gulfstream V

Besides having the ability to tickle your funny bone, Jim Carrey is also aviation enthusiast, which is why, when it came to choosing his private jet, he opted for the remarkable Gulfstream V.

Known for its safety features, the Gulfstream V is one of the most respected jets in the world and costs a huge $59 million. According to Stratosjets , Carrey has made his luxury private jet available to individuals for private jet charter. Interested travellers can enjoy a 16-passenger plane that boasts impressively long range and nears the speed of sound while cruising up to 51,000 ft. And if you have to question how much that might cost, you can’t afford it.

8 8. They Own It: Oprah Winfrey - A Roomy Bombardier BD-700 Global Express XRS

Oprah has a private jet is probably one the least surprising facts you’ll read today. It’s Oprah - of course, she has her own plane. And her aircraft of choice, the Bombardier BD-700 Global Express, features designer fixtures in the bathroom and galley, along with an exquisite all-leather interior. It can also carry up to 19 passengers and fly to virtually anywhere in the world.

Winfrey told British Vogue that her aircraft was her “greatest luxury” and it was an encounter with a rude fan at the airport in the 90s that convinced her to purchase it.

7 7. They Own It: Jackie Chan - A Custom Embraer Legacy 650 And Legacy 500

Jackie Chan, the legendary martial artist and actor, is a brand ambassador for Brazilian airplane maker Embraer. In 2012, he took delivery of an Embraer Legacy 650, which enjoys a personalised, dragon-themed paint job, and a distinct cabin for each major activity in his executive life: work, play and rest.

In 2016, he added a Legacy 500, a state-of-the-art executive jet, to his fleet, which you can bet is every bit as fancy.

6 6. They Own IT: Jimmy Buffett - The “Hemisphere Dancer” Grumman HU-16 Albatross

Famous singer and entrepreneur Jimmy Buffet’s love of flying first blossomed when he was in college. He set the goal of having his license by his 40th birthday and has been flying for over twenty years now.

Buffett has a Commercial Pilot License with ratings for multi-engine land and sea aircraft, and an instrument rating for flying in clouds and low weather. He also holds type ratings for the Cessna Citation 500-series jets, the Falcon 50 and 900, and the Grumman Albatross, which he purchased in 1990 and named the Hemisphere Dancer. Today, the plane is currently on display at Margaritaville in Orlando, Florida.