- Friday, April 26, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
BORIS Johnson, the outgoing premier of the UK who chaired his final cabinet meeting on Tuesday (19), faced more criticism after he shot a selfie video of himself flying a RAF (Royal Air Force) Typhoon fighter jet.
10 Downing Street, the British prime minister’s official YouTube channel, released a video on Monday (18) showing the Conservative leader in the cockpit of the fighter plane where he was also in charge of the controls.
“Prime Minister Boris Johnson flies in the cockpit of a Typhoon fighter jet from RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire,” the caption of the YouTube post read.
⚡️Resigned Johnson tries on pilot's profession
Retiring British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was a co-pilot and flew the Eurofighter Typhoon. The Daily Mail reported.
Johnson recorded a video during the flight, showing the process of refueling in the air. pic.twitter.com/2J5ZhqNawJ
— DRx Rahul7 (@DRxrahul303) July 19, 2022
According to Britain’s ITV, the video of Johnson flying the jet was shot last week when he was given a demonstration of the same by the pilots and air crew at the Lincolnshire RAF base. The outgoing leader visited RAF Coningsby to inspect the RAF’s two Quick Reaction Alert stations that guard the UK’s airspace.
Johnson, who will take care of the prime minister’s post till early September when his successor’s name will be confirmed, met the representatives from the aviation industry at the Farnborough Air Show on Tuesday (19).
Speaking to reporters there, Johnson said he briefly took control of the aircraft to perform some tricks. He added that when wing commander Paul Hansen asked him, “Do you want to have a go?”, he replied saying, “Are you sure? It seems very expensive to me”.
“‘I think we only have 148 of them and they cost 75 million pounds a pop.’ And he said: ‘Don’t worry, you can’t break it.’ So I thought, ‘Oh well, famous last words,'” he added.
“So I pushed the joystick right over to the right and we did an aileron roll and I pulled the joystick right back and we did a fantastic loop-the-loop and then I did a more complicated thing called a barrel roll and I pushed the stick up and right a bit,” Johnson added.
Johnson, who quit his post earlier this month after his government saw a series of resignations from top leaders, also drew comparisons between flying the fighter jet and the government’s achievements under his tenure.
“After three happy years in the cockpit, performing some pretty difficult if not astonishing feats, I am about to hand the controls over seamlessly to someone else,” Johnson said.
He also took a jibe at his detractors within the Tories.
“I leave it to you to imagine who at this stage I would like to send into orbit,” Johnson said.
Johnson’s mid-air act received a mixed response online.
Social media users called out the outgoing prime minister and said how he seemed to try and embody actor Tom Cruise’s Pete “Maverick” Mitchell from the movie ‘Top Gun’.
“What did it cost the taxpayer to let our lame duck Prime Minister go on this joyride jolly & do his pathetic Tom Cruise tribute act? Ridiculous,” television presenter Piers Morgan tweeted.
Another internet user praisedJohnson for keeping things “positive and popular,” while another simply wrote, “What was the purpose of this little jolly?”
