You don’t have to go to space to feel the weightlessness of orbit. Sue Nelson joins a special flight that puts its passengers into zero gravity – at least for a few seconds.

 Not many aircraft captains give their passengers a rocket launch-style countdown before take-off, but this is no ordinary plane. For starters, everyone on board, apart from the crew, is a scientist and has passed a full medical check – including a heart assessment. This is not a trip for nervous fliers.
“Pull up. Thirty, 40…”
The captain’s instructions refer to a manoeuvre so challenging it requires three pilots to be in the cockpit. The aircraft pulls up from a level flight into an incline at increasingly steep angles of 30, then 40 degrees.
In the middle section, where the windows are blocked by a padded wall, everyone is either standing, sitting on the floor or lying down because the seats in this Airbus A310 have all been removed.

Source: BBC NEWS