Poor airshow display? The other side of the coin from a display pilot

Great to see comment from the ‘other side’. The pilots and/or student pilots among us probably understand most of that already as we have experienced some of those condition for ourselves. Hopefully Bill has managed to help the average man in the street understand a little better the factors which can affect a display.

Surely, factors such as wind speed/direction, aircraft size/speed have always been part of the mix and don’t in themselves explain anything about tamer displays nowadays.

Some examples of manoeuvres you will not see nowadays:
– Sea Vixen at Hullavingtion do a fast low run along the flight line but over the crowd (ie crowd side of the barrier).
– Hunter at Farnborough doing a multi-turn spin at lowish altitude.
– Arrow Active at Wolverhampton doing at low pass very close in to the crowd barrier.
– Glider at I think Yeovilton descending in a continuous series of loops, the last one pulling out only just above the runway (particularly scary).
– 2 Scimitars landing side-by-side at Farnborough while a third Scimitar lands between them in the opposite direction.
– Red Arrow Gnats at Tern Hill flying below tree tops at the airfield boundary.

Displays to me are much tamer than they were 30 years ago. But the a/c are now older and also due to H&S rules the shows wouldn’t get liability insurance. A pity they are not the same but also understandable.

Good to read that. We’ve all been guilty of putting the boot in now and then and some rather more heavily than others!