Should we not also spare a thought for the eleven persons who died?

These were personal tragedies for the families involved and, of course, we should spare a thought for them, especially if we attended the Shoreham Airshow that day, or any airshow on any other day, because technically we must bear some measure of responsibility; after all, if nobody wanted to pay to see aircraft displayed at airshows there would be no airshows, and consequently, no airshow crashes.

However, 1,732 people were killed in accidents on the roads in the United Kingdom in 2015 so if we consider, for a moment, those that were unlucky enough to be travelling down the A27 that day, rather than those who had specifically come to watch the airshow from the road, the number killed, although a personal tragedy for them and their families, is just about the average number killed every day on the roads in 2015.

That statement isn’t meant to sound callous but rather it is an attempt at some perspective; and I appreciate that no ‘perspective’ is going to make the slightest difference to the grief experienced by the families involved.

Thankfully, apart from those unlucky enough to have become personally involved, the Shoreham crash is most remarkable for how rare such a crash, with such consequences, has been at airshows in the United Kingdom in the last sixty years.