The real high fliers

Actors, home and abroad have discovered a new way to get ‘high’. From desis Kunal Kapoor and Sohail Khan and Hollywood actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to even pop diva Geri Halliwell, all have enrolled for flying lessons and are fulfilling their dreams of touching the sky, writes Rajesh Ahuja.

Actors, home and abroad have discovered a new way to get ‘high’. From desis Kunal Kapoor and Sohail Khan and Hollywood actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to even pop diva Geri Halliwell, all have enrolled for flying lessons and are fulfilling their dreams of touching the sky.

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While Pitt took to flying a helicopter while shooting for Inglorious Basterds in April, and later tried flying a plane in June, his super-hot partner Angelina Jolie marked her attendance in the cockpit recently while shooting in
Los Angeles. While most fly private jets, Halliwell prefers a chopper. Dressed in combats, biker boots and a vest top, Ginger Spice learnt the basics of operating a helicopter at an airfield in Buckinghamshire, UK.

Closer home, Kunal Kapoor, who’s been taking lessons at a flying academy in Sagar, has found company in Sohail Khan, who too took to his favourite hobby a few days ago in Ujjain. Kapoor, who always nursed a dream of flying an airplane, is kicked about it. “It’s something I always wanted to do. It was on my ‘have-to-do-before-I-die’ list,” he says. Khan, on the other hand, is dabbling in it for the love of walking in the clouds. “I love flying; it gives me a different high altogether,” he says.

Actors, who keep reigniting their creative souls by indulging in such hobbies, see flying airplanes as the coolest activity. Kapoor, who loves being a pilot when not working, feels the more you fly, the better. “Though there isn’t any time limit for completing the course, one has to fly for 55 hours to get a license. I intend completing it by early next year,” he says.

Actor R Madhavan, has been vocal about his love for fighter planes since his appearance in the DD show, Sea Hawks. But unlike Kapoor who would “love to buy a plane someday”, Madhavan, who played a fighter pilot in the superhit film Rang De Basanti feels, though he wished so, it’s too late for him to become an Air Force pilot.