Cruise for wannabe fighter pilots

FORGET shuffleboard. Some of the most extreme adventures available to holidaymakers anywhere are these days found on cruise ships.

Guests of Crystal Cruises, for example, are invited to haul themselves off their deckchairs for a day to fly a MiG fighter jet.

As shore excursions go, it sure beats following a tour guide’s umbrella round town.

Passengers are plucked from their ship and transferred to Nizhny Novgorod where, and for many this may be the hardest part, they have to undergo a medical examination.

The trick is not to get too excited at this stage because if your blood pressure rockets they won’t let you fly.

Once you’ve passed that, let your pulse race to your heart’s content because it’s time to don the flight suit and helmet, get on the plane and give the thumbs up.

Your English speaking co-pilot does all the tricky manoeuvres while you get to turn in a circle all by yourself, all for an additional $45,599 (€37,385).

If that’s not enough for you, Crystal Cruises can sneak you into Russia’s former top secret cosmonaut training centre, Star City, hidden in forests outside Moscow.

Like Disney for grown-ups, visitors here get to experience the simulated G-forces of blast off, a flight in orbit and spacecraft descent in a 300-tonne centrifuge.

You get to enjoy zero gravity weightlessness in a specially constructed space ship and even install a space antenna on a replica space station while wearing an authentic space suit and submerged underwater.

Prices for these “out of this world” experiences range from $4,359 (€3,572) to $32,995 (€27,040). Again, that’s on top of your cruise fare.

crystalcruises.com