There’s a comment on FB that the pilot called in that there was a possibility his left gear wasn’t locked so he took the grass runway. At this point there’s no confirmation.

Appears the cherry pickers were ON the runway….

Press release: MEDIA ADVISORY FROM WARBIRDS OVER WANAKA: 7:15pm, March 31, 2018

Warbirds Over Wanaka airshow organisers have launched a full investigation into today’s incident involving a WWII fighter aircraft which was damaged while landing after a display.

The pilot of the Yak 3 aircraft was unharmed after the aircraft wing appeared to strike a cherry picker that was on the grass runway as part of another display.

Warbirds Over Wanaka General Manager Ed Taylor says: “Our main concern has been the welfare of the pilot and we have offered him our full support.”

Taylor says there will be no further comment from airshow organisers until that investigation has been completed. CAA officials were in attendance at the airshow and continue to be involved.

The airshow programme was delayed for about one hour while the damaged aircraft was removed from the airfield. The airshow programme then resumed and the event will continue tomorrow.

Not seeing an issue with 2 tonkas.. no one seems to moan about having damn near an entire squadron of Spitfires at DX…

TonyT: The same can be said for NOT washing some fabrics, The washing gets all the crap out & restores the fire resistance.

I’m doing pyro at an airshow next weekend, was supposed to pick up my “safety Tshirt* today but they were a few short. Looks like the weather won’t be the usual 100deg & severe clear so the BDU’s are coming out retirement

I have this 1941 book & it has about 60 pages of adverts in it.

Like this:

At least two of the guys on the project have mentioned the fraud. Personally I couldn’t care less. Not my monkeys/circus.

This was posted on FB yesterday by a former worker on the project:

They bought like 30 cars on the company dime. Every time a change would be working they’d change things up to slow production. Then bought tooling that nobody used. They made parts that weren’t needed. They would make a part that was fully conforming, scrap it, and make it again.
Lufthansa closed Hamburg. The Germans onsite were all from that facility. They didn’t want to go home to nothing, and didn’t want to go to Sophia to keep their jobs. They were living on the company dime, and driving Mercedes Jeeps and Corvettes that the company bought.
The American managers are all at the end of their careers. And none of them were quite ready to retire. It was in their best interest to drag this it as long as possible. They didn’t want to finish.
Lufthansa dumped nearly $300m and 10 years into a plane that isn’t even close to flight. I’ve never worked anyplace that was so totally predicated on fraud.

There’s a few at Lockheed.. who can’t talk about what they did (yet)