I’m sorry quoting Wikipedia as an authoritative source…
Good grief. Moggy the nit-picker…
Look back at the history of air displays, to the guys who barnstormed and did crazy stunts in aeroplanes at shows or even just in a vacant field for a whip-round. Feel offended by the word yourself but in this event it is totally in context – unless it is just the mention of Wikipedia that has lit your touchpaper?
Whether or not it’s simply age related or that the speed of social media interaction subsumes everything else, I know not, but my first reaction, had I filmed this or any other serious accident would be to offer the footage to the authorities, not to post it on the internet for all and sundry to argue over.
This thread was started just a few minutes, maximum, after the crash; others, who caught the incident on video or still image, will have not believed their luck(!) in seeing something happen right in front of their lens and their first thoughts will be along the lines of ‘I’ve got to show this to people!’ Yes, maybe they will subsequently think about how it might assist with the resulting investigation but, especially in the case of the image that has been all over the front pages (which I have a feeling is from a video, and if it is then I believe it is one that has not been transmitted. Yet.), they do now have the opportunity to share their experience, show just how close it was, and (although they don’t know it) let the world see just what a tragedy looks like – rather than showing destroyed cars and charred wreckage.
I hate to say it but there is a Facebook fundraiser for the victims and their families which probably wouldn’t be as successful as it is if there wasn’t the shock factor of those crash images/videos to get the general public’s attention.
The irony is that in keeping the aircraft away from the airshow spectators alot of the flying is now away from the airfields and at some point they have to cross roads,villages etc.
Some of the freeloaders in the so called naughty fields [at Duxford] are sitting adjacent to public roads and footpaths and even a school,people are entitled to be on those whether people like it or not.
Yes, yes, yes.
To some here the term freeloader can be just as easily pinned on a man walking his dog who happens to look up at the displaying aircraft: should he have to pay? NO!
My memory is that over by the old pub there was a bus stop; actually my memory also encompasses driving past one year and seeing lots of people sitting out the front of the pub, watching the display, drink in hand – were they freeloading? But back to the bus stop – was it still in use, up until…?
I would like to see loops and maneuvers that are pulling out at low height stopped,these aircraft are not designed to be flown like that.Horizontal and climbing ok as you are trading for height and time.If you look at crashes over the last 30 years or so alot of them would still be here if they had had a couple of hundred more feet in height at the bottom of the manoeuvre .
Another yes.
Clearly, any aerobatic maneuvers (stunts is a perfectly acceptable word here, I think you all are looking for insults from the media where none are intended) should be confined to the airfield boundaries or over open land.
Probably one of the reasons the Red Arrows won’t display at smaller airfields as their display radius must be huge compared to many participants.
The Reds displayed a few miles west of Shoreham at a site that must be rotten for most of the audience a couple of months ago. I watched them display from the airfield – freeloading! – whilst (having been there several times myself) most of the fee payers at the Goodwood Festival of Speed (a site that essentially is focused around a road up a hill) won’t have seen very much of them due to trees, etc. The fact that the site is on a hill can’t have helped, either.
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