The Squadron is helping thousands of corporate customers see how high they can soar without ever lifting their feet off the ground

Photos: Jeff Zorabedian

Crashing a $100 million fighter jet into the country’s largest man-made reservoir wasn’t something that I ever really planned on doing. But there I was one sunny spring afternoon crashing a supersonic stealth jet not once, not twice, but three times, joining a group of human resources executives at a special introductory session at The Squadron, a Manhattan-based Israeli start-up that uses world-class flight simulators to help corporate employees maximize their potential.

As someone who has never even flown a kite successfully, I didn’t really expect to see my name up there at the top of The Squadron’s leaderboard. I wasn’t feeling overly confident about my ability to fly an F-35, or even a simulation of one, but hey, you never really know until you give it a try, right?

Dressed for Success

There is a certain energy in the air from the moment I first walk into The Squadron’s World Trade Center training facility. Aviation motifs are everywhere, from The Squadron’s winged logo to an entranceway cabinet stocked with neatly folded flight suits and leather bomber jackets. The hallway floors’ lit edges create a runway effect, engineered to imbue visitors with the feeling that they are about to take off and reach new heights. There are images of fighter jets on the walls, and just being in The Squadron makes me feel like I can fly.

At first glance, The Squadron evokes images of the U.S. Navy’s TOPGUN program, known for producing elite fighter pilots, but the unobtrusive mezuzah affixed to the wall outside The Squadron’s double glass doors quickly blurs that distinction. Hebrew seems to be the first language of every employee I meet, and the office chatter that I overhear during my two hours at The Squadron is in Hebrew as well. I kind of want to raise my hand and say, “Maybe don’t tell any secrets in front of me because I understand every word you’re saying.”

Like every visitor to The Squadron, I’m invited to suit up for my F-35 experience, and I step into a room filled with flight suits in all sizes, arranged by size with military precision. Forget about the fighter pilot uniforms your kids wear on Purim — these olive-green coveralls are the real deal. There are crisp epaulets at the shoulders, a colorful American flag patch just below the left shoulder, and two different Squadron patches affixed on either side of the front-center zipper. The multitude of pockets, zippers, and patches on the flight suits leave me wondering what they’re intended to hold. Do fighter pilots need keys to operate their stealth jets, or maybe a place to stash their lip balm? Either way, I couldn’t wait to put one on.

I text a quick picture of the flight simulators located just a few feet away to my kids, figuring that I can score some cool-mom points with them. I literally crash and burn on that one, with one daughter replying, “Mom, that doesn’t look like fun,” while my son follows up with an unsmiling, green-around-the-gills emoji. I hope that their lack of enthusiasm isn’t a bad omen for my adventure yet to come, but I push that thought out of my head.

A smiling Squadron employee named Eylon directs us to a group of tablets where we sign in, and she takes pictures of each of us in all of our flight-suited glory against a backdrop of a massive black-and-white picture of an F-35.

“When the Jewish girls come here, they all bring skirts to wear over their flight suits because they don’t wear pants,” she says, smiling knowingly at me. “Nobody wants to miss wearing the flight suit!”