Indeed. One of my favorite pastimes is fishing the GoM offshore TX in small boats (the only kind my friends and I can afford), and one of my favorite things to see out there is when the boat runs through a school of flying fish. When dozens to hundreds of them launch suddenly the view is much like running through a hayfield full of grasshoppers.
I've seen them airborne for several hundred yards, with and without the extra tail-fin "motorboating" burst, especially if they happened to launch in more or less the same direction we were running.
Along with shrimp, squid, and dorado (dolphin, mahi mahi) they're one of ocean's creatures I'd least like to be -- they're on almost every pelagic predator's lunch menu. Barracuda positively love 'em; they'll hang around offshore oil platforms all day to gorge on flying fish drawn to the lights at night. Because their chosen mode of escape requires hanging out at the surface sillhoueted against the bright sky, flying fish are ambush targets for predators looking up like mackerel and dorado. Yeah, they're fast, but so are sailfish, tuna, and wahoo, all of which will chase them as long as they can see them or guess about where they'll splash down -- a hundred yards or so is no hill for a 50mph-swimming stepper, and I've even see them snatched out of the air.
