Are the rich now turning to fighter jets after having owned business class aircraft? Probably not, the fleet of F-16s is bought by a flight training company and one of the bought fighter jets was seen soaring sky-high in Arizona.
The world’s first privately owned F-16 takes off and the story is brought to you in a recorded video.
Top Aces is a defense contractor based in Montreal, Quebec, and offers contracted flight training services to the Canadian Armed Forces via the Contracted Airborne Training Services program for the main part.
29 F-16’s were bought by the private training company, Top Aces, from the Israeli Airforce, and one out of the 29 aircraft was seen flying over the skies of Arizona.
The newly bought F-16s will perform as stand-ins for adversary fighters to train fighter pilots. The company has a contract to train U.S air force pilots as well. They will use the highly maneuverable F-16 to simulate Russian and Chinese jets.
The first of the fleet’s aircraft flight marked the first time ever that a privately owned F-16 was taken to the air. The first aircraft that came from the Israeli air force holds higher significance as it was a part of the famous combat mission that shut down Iraq’s nuclear weapon program temporarily.
This particular F-16 has the U.S air force serial number 780322 and was later bought by the Israeli forces in the late 1970s, it is famously known as “Netz” and was a key player in Operation Opera.
As per the Aviationist, it was one of the eight aircraft that attacked the Osirak reactor on June 7, 1981. At that time, Israel suspected the reactor was being built to develop weapons-grade nuclear material, and tackling that threat, the aircraft bombed the under-construction facility and set back Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program.
