Watch us fly Top Gun: Maverick stunt plane, survive the Goose death move, and barf

When Paramount Pictures came to EW with an offer to experience some of the flight training the Top Gun: Maverick cast went through prior to filming, insisting we could actually fly a stunt plane capable of pulling up to +/- 10 Gs without a pilot's license, not everyone was feeling the need for speed.

As wild as it sounds on the surface, it was even more concerning after hearing the actors from the movie talk about it. One of the reasons Maverick is now Tom Cruise's highest-grossing film is its practical effects and lack of CGI: Those are really the actors flying those planes. They got a three-month crash course in aviation designed specifically by Cruise to prepare, and in interviews leading up to the release, they weren't shy about sharing some of the film's unique hazards.

As Miles Teller, who stars as Goose's son Rooster, proudly shared on Late Night With Seth Meyers, after finding himself covered in hives on set, he went to the hospital, where blood work revealed "flame retardant, pesticides, and jet fuel" in his system. But mostly, air sickness presented the biggest challenge, as detailed in a particularly gross story from Glenn Powell. "At one point, I was like, 'Okay, I'm going to puke,'" the actor, who plays Jake "Hangman" Seresin, said during an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. "So I tried to sneak my vomit bag because I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of this naval aviator." Still, Powell admitted to "violently puking" at an inopportune time: "[My copilot] just inverts the plane, pulls down, and so I'm puking into the canopy. I'm looking at the ground here [points up], and the puke that I just puked is being puked back into my face."

PARAMOUNT PICTURES Glen Powell takes to the skies in 'Top Gun: Maverick'

Top Gun producer Jerry Bruckheimer told me that every actor who went through the flight training vomited at one point or another, with the notable exceptions of veteran aviator Cruise and the apparently iron-stomached Monica Barbaro, who plays the film's only female pilot. "You can see the struggles of what they're doing, what they're going through," Bruckheimer said. "That's all real; that's not made up."

I knew all of this going in, so I have no excuse for what came later. But getting to fly was a lifelong dream of mine, and after clearing it with my family and EW's legal department, I decided to see if Paramount was seriously going to let me do this. They wouldn't let anyone die while promoting the Top Gun: Maverick digital release, I assured myself over the ensuing weeks. But somewhere between arriving at Sky Combat Ace in San Diego (where you can pay to do this yourself) and putting on my parachute, which I was told would come in handy should we need to exit the aircraft prior to landing, I started to wonder what I had gotten myself into.

I'd be flying the Extra 330 (see below), the same single-propeller, aerobatic stunt plane the actors trained in, along with an experienced pilot, who, sitting behind me in the cockpit, could take over the plane's interconnected flight controls should I get carried away. While the Extra 330 isn't as fast as the F-18 jets seen in the movie, it's a lot more maneuverable and capable of packing a surprisingly similar punch of G-force. I'd be going up with two other journalists, and part of the experience included a dogfighting simulation (think laser tag in the sky). I was in the last of the day's groupings, allowing me to watch in quiet horror as, one after another, other would-be pilots returned from the skies wide-eyed, wobbly-kneed, and soaking wet, sweating more from the adrenaline than the 90-degree heat. But they were alive, and after getting their land legs back under them, most said they had a good time.

EW Extra 330

When it was my turn, I met my copilot, Scott "McFly" McDonald, in the hangar and strapped into the cockpit. The propellor came to life noisily, and we taxied into position on the runway. McFly took off with a jolt, executing what he called a "steep high-powered climb," Soon, we were soaring in clear skies over the desert about 30 minutes east of San Diego. After taking some time to get comfortable and enjoy the view, McFly passed me the controls, and I started flying a plane for the first time in my life. The joystick was surprisingly sensitive, and the plane dipped and bucked when I took the reins. But after some instruction from my copilot, we leveled off, and I managed to steer us smoothly. The feeling of flying, the freedom to navigate anywhere in the sky, is indescribably exhilarating.

After briefly familiarizing myself with the controls, McFly asked if I wanted to try a backflip. Sure, why not? I followed his instructions and pulled back on the joystick. The plane began to fly straight up, perpendicular to the ground. I kept pulling, trying to keep us straight, and watched as the plane's nose went up and over my head. Soon we were upside down, the ground speeding past above our heads. I continued to pull until we turned right-side up and flew evenly again, parallel to the ground. From there, I practiced barrel rolls and something called a hammerhead maneuver. According to McFly, we also tried "inverted flight, vertical rolls, and torque rolls, going straight up to the point that we fell backward through our smoke, called the tail slide."

EW 'Top Gun: Maverick': EW in the pilot's seat.

At this point, we would have proceeded to the dogfighting portion of the afternoon, but my fellow participants had apparently had enough of aviating for the day and wanted to return to solid ground. So, after a quick practice round where I was able to try firing the lasers (a direct hit generated a satisfying cloud of smoke from the enemy's tailpipe), McFly decided to fill the rest of our time with a more advanced aerobatics display than initially planned. The two final stunts were the Lomcovák, "essentially a negative-G front flip where the tail cartwheels end over end," and "a spiraling tower into an inverted flat spin," which, little did I know at the time, is the "maneuver that killed Goose" in the original Top Gun film. I survived, but not totally unscathed: It was around this time that I realized I'd be getting the true Maverick cast experience. After emerging from a spin, I knew the plane had leveled off, but that didn't stop the world from continuing to rotate violently outside my window.

Luckily we weren't upside down at the time, so unlike Powell, I managed to keep all my breakfast in the barf bag. But by then, I knew my flight was over and meekly asked McFly to return me to the surface world. It couldn't have taken more than 10 minutes, but it felt like a hot, sweaty eternity before we could land. When we rolled back into the hangar, a cameraman on hand for post-flight interviews asked, "Do you have what it takes to be a Top Gun?" After passing two full vomit bags as discreetly as possible to a kind man holding a trash can, I admitted defeat and was taken to a dark room to lie down.

Scott Garfield/Paramount Top Gun: Maverick

When I interviewed Kevin LaRosa, the aerial coordinator on Maverick, a couple of days later, he put the actor's performance in perspective even further. "Imagine if you were also responsible for starting and stopping the cameras in the back of the aircraft at the right time," he said. "Imagine if you were responsible for your own sound checks. Imagine if you had a mirror zipped into your flight suit, and you were responsible for your own hair, makeup, and wardrobe in between every take. Imagine that you were responsible for making sure that your harnesses were straight and didn't fall off when you were pulling Gs, and your face mask was centered. And on top of all that, you need to act. Imagine that. That's what they did every day."

From now on, I imagine I'll leave it to the professionals.

Top Gun: Maverick is in theaters and on digital now. See a highly edited, vomit-free video of my flight above.

Related content:

• Top Gun: Maverick sinks domestic box office record held by Titanic

• Here's what it will take for movie theaters to survive 10 years from now

• Why the end of the Paramount decrees is bad for movies and movie theaters: Opinion

• Leonardo DiCaprio's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood costars tease him about Titanic death