{"id":659014,"date":"2026-05-09T22:06:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T22:06:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/659014\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T22:06:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T22:06:07","slug":"tkachuk-soars-with-u-s-air-force-thunderbirds-in-f-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/659014\/","title":{"rendered":"Tkachuk soars with U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds in F-16"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cIt\u2019s very nice of them to share this with me,\u201d\u00a0Tkachuk <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nhl.com\/panthers\/news\/tkachuk-has-one-of-the-greatest-experiences-of-my-life-flying-with-u-s-air-force-thunderbirds\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">told the Panthers<\/a>. \u201cIt was an amazing day leading into it. It\u2019s crazy how much stuff goes into to flying for just over an hour. The only time I felt a little iffy up there was when (the pilot) let me fly it. I was just doing flip after flip. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tkachuk definitely wasn\u2019t just winging it on Friday. He went through hours of extensive training before hitting the skies, including special breathing exercises to prepare for the extreme G-force of the place (the crew hit 9.5 G\u2019s in the air).<\/p>\n<p>After the crew landed, Tkachuk presented the pilots with a customized Panthers jersey and even let everyone take pictures with his gold medal from the 2026 Winter Olympics.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe were talking about a lot of similarities between hockey and what they do,\u201d Tkachuk told the Panthers. \u201cIt\u2019s a family atmosphere. They\u2019re so close and they need each other. They rely on each other. You have to do your exact part in order for it to work. They\u2019re an inspiration. I love how they\u2019re a big team.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Thunderbirds are in town for the Fort Lauderdale Air Show taking place on Saturday and Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>The day before Tkachuk\u2019s flight, the pilots took a tour of the Panthers practice facility, meeting the players at the Baptist Health\u00a0IcePlex.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s very nice of them to share this with me,\u201d\u00a0Tkachuk told the Panthers. \u201cIt was an amazing day&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-659014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}