John entered the Airforce in 1989 and earned his wings in 1992. He became an instructor in Goetsenhoven afterwards to teach student pilots to fly the Marchetti SF-260M/D. He also was a wingman in the Swallows formation team during the seasons ’95-’96-’97, good for 75 demonstrations in Belgium and abroad.

In 1998 he converted to the F-16, initially in the 23 Devil squadron, and later on in the 31 Tiger squadron when both squadrons merged.
During his time as a Tiger het got selected for the airshow demo pilot starting in 2003. His first years as a demo pilot he flew 18 airshows.
By the end of the year he collected 3,500 flight hours, of which 1,000 on the F-16.

On October 28th 2005, John ‘John’ Vandebosch performed his very last demo in front of his colleagues and team members on his home base Kleine Brogel. John flew three full airshow seasons as Belgian demo pilot and this job brought and a lot of work and sacrifices. Besides being a demo pilot he also had to fulfil his daily job as a fighter pilot. Over those three years John flew dozens of demo’s and went from the south of France to Greece and from England to Poland and so on.
After his last demo at Kleine Brogel, a small ceremony was organised upon which John received a well deserved ‘Job well done’ from his colleagues. But not only his colleagues told him it was a great job he had done, almost at every airshow John received very good comments and people were always amazed with his performance and the amount of skill he demonstrated  as a presentation pilot.

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