Tom Cruise captivated TV viewers of the Paris Olympics closing ceremony, who saw him sky diving out of a cargo plane as his Ethan Hunt alter ego to bring the Olympic flag to Los Angeles for the 2028 Games.
But how that flag actually got to LA on Monday was way more pedestrian, involving a passenger aircraft flown by Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines.
Cruise’s sequence showing him riding a motorcycle onto a cargo plane as his Mission: Impossible character and then sky diving over the Hollywood Hills was a prerecorded segment.
In real life, Delta as a key sponsor and official airline of the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and Team USA carried the Olympic flag from Paris to Los Angeles on an Airbus A350 jet emblazoned with a special LA28 Olympics paint job.
Also on the flight after the closing ceremony in Paris were dignitaries including Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and delegations from Team USA and the LA28 organization planning the 2028 Olympic Games.
The LA28 plane has a paint job with red, white, blue and “Olympic gold to create a sunset-like color gradient,” according to the airline, an LA28 insignia with a Delta widget standing in for the A, and three palm trees signifying the years Los Angeles will have hosted the Olympics — 1932, 1984 and 2028 to come.
The LA28 plane will now be flown in regular passenger service on Delta flights.
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