When Maj. Taylor Hiester was 9 years old, his mother surprised him with a trip to Reading Regional Airport.
She didn’t tell him that the visit would bring him inside the cockpit of one of America’s most legendary aircraft — a plane that once ferried Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
“I got all shaky for a moment,” a young Hiester told the Reading Eagle at the time.
Despite his excitement, Hiester’s encounter with the former Air Force One was far from his first time around a plane.
He’d already been taking flying lessons for a year in pursuit of his dream of becoming an Air Force pilot.
Today that dream is Hiester’s reality.
“I grew up in Robesonia and went to Conrad Weiser and just fell in love with planes,” Hiester said. “Learned to fly at the Reading Airport and went off to Air Force pilot training. Fast forward about 10 years later, I’m the Air Force’s F-16 demo pilot.”
On the weekend of May 24, Hiester will return to his roots, flying the F-16 Fighting Falcon in a new air show at Harrisburg International Airport.
“To have the opportunity to come back and fly so close to home … feels like once in a lifetime,” Hiester said.
Hiester’s career
Hiester’s tenure with the Air Force has taken him on adventures across the country and beyond.
He’s served with the South Dakota Air National Guard’s 114th Fighter Wing and the 81st Fighter Squadron in Georgia and was an F-16 instructor pilot in the 55th Fighter Squadron at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C.
His role as an alert pilot on watch for foreign threats even saw Hiester patrol the skies of Washington, D.C., during the presidential inauguration in 2021.
“Having that front seat to history … that is something I look back on with a lot of endearment,” Hiester said.
In 2024, Hiester was chosen to lead the Air Combat Command F-16 Viper Demonstration Team, a group of specialists dedicated to showcasing the F-16.
Since then he’s performed at more than 30 air shows in the U.S. and abroad, including Peru and Belgium.
“It’s about 15 minutes of the most aggressive flying the F-16 can do,” Hiester said of his demonstrations.
Pushing limits
His single-plane display is designed to force the F-16 to its limits, and will involve flying just short of the speed of sound.
“It’s as fast as we can go (around crowds),” Hiester said. “We don’t want to break the sound barrier … (a sonic boom) would break some belongings.”
That speed will see Hiester cover roughly three football fields per second.
It will also subject his body to 9 G’s of force, or nine times the force of gravity.
“A roller coaster is probably anywhere between one-and-a-half and two G’s,” Hiester noted. “(When I fly) I wear a pair of what look like snow pants. They squeeze my lower legs to keep the blood into my brain so I can stay awake and make decisions.”
As the only pilot, the stakes for Hiester are high — passing out could mean crashing the plane.
“Even with the equipment and the training I’ve received, staying awake is still a challenge,” Hiester said. “I’m flexing all of my lower body muscles, keeping my upper body relaxed and also doing some (breathing techniques) that allow me to keep air in my lungs.”
Despite the strain, and the stakes, Hiester said pushing the boundaries of machine capability and human potential in the cockpit is an unmatchable high.
“As a little boy that grew up dreaming of flying the F-16, it is a thrill that I know I will not be able to get anywhere else,” Hiester said. “To merge man and machine like we do in an F-16, it’s just the coolest job in the world. I feel like it’s an opportunity I will never be able to repay the country for. That’s why I try and cherish every moment of it.”
For Hiester, cherishing that opportunity means sharing it with the people he grew up with.
“All my closest friends and family are still in the Robesonia area … the people that I grew up with, I’m looking forward to sharing it with them,” Hiester said. “It feels like a huge homecoming, to be able to do an air show so close (to where I grew up.)”
For more information about the Harrisburg Air Dot Show tour, including dates and times, visit air.show/centralpa/.
Source: Berkshire mont