John Travolta celebrated his 72nd birthday by obtaining a new pilot’s license.
The Hollywood icon is a keen aviator and is thought to own at least seven planes, having secured his first jet license at just 22 years old. Now the Pulp Fiction star has admitted he has added yet another achievement, sharing the happy news with his fans on Instagram on Wednesday, February 18.
John is so passionate about flying that he even owns a mansion at Florida‘s Jumbolair Aviation Estates, a 550-acre gated community with the largest licensed private runway in America. He bought his property on the lavish estate in 2001, which boasts its own separate stretch of tarmac.
Announcing his news, John shared a video on instagram of a Bombardier Global Express jet and wrote,”It’s my birthday today! And I’m very proud to say I got my license in the Global Express! Thank you for all my birthday wishes!”
The video showed him sitting in the cockpit, as well as down on the tarmac as the camera panned along the aircraft while he said, “Congratulations to me.” John often shares clips and images from his passion for planes with his fans, including his “recurrent jet training” he has to undergo annually in a flight simulator.
John once admitted feeling he was going to die after suffering “a total electrical failure” while flying his family in 1992. He told Fox News in 2023, “I knew what it felt like to absolutely think you’re going to die.
“I had two good jet engines, but I had no instruments, no electricity, nothing. And I thought it was over. And then, as if by a miracle, we descended, as per the rules, to a lower altitude.”
At the crucial moment, he saw a monument and “identified that Washington National Airport was right next to it,” so he was able to land there. John was just 15 years old when he first began learning to fly and secured his license in 1978.
Thatyear was also significant for the actor because it was when his iconic cult-classic movie musical Grease was released in theaters, catapulting his fame to dizzy new heights around the globe. He has earned a space on the Wall of Honor at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum for his love of flying.
He has also been named as a worldwide ambassador for Qantas, and honored by the American Institute of Aeronautical Engineers.
John is a single dad to his children, Benjamin, 15, and Ella, 25, after their mother, Kelly Preston, died from breast cancer in 2020, aged 57. The couple married in 1991 and had three children, Ella and Benjamin, and their late son Jett, who died aged just 16 in 2009.
Jett suffered from seizures and had one during a family vacation to the Bahamas, which caused a fatal injury when he fell and hit his head on the bathtub.
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‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.the-express.com ’
