Airlink ultra-low-altitude stadium flyover stunt under official review

Death said:
This is why we can't have nice things.
Senior pilots all round crews and everything was above board from what I've read.
Making a mountain out of a mole hill...
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If that is, in fact, all true, then a review should confirm that. Nothing wrong with making sure that all went according to plan.
 
Yes, i remember military fly overs where you probably could have scraped the trees, and plenty of helicopter pilots who came back, and we had to do a little bit of work to remove the twigs, leaves and top branches of the trees from the inside of the airframe, where they got blown in. as they also did drug busts there was often a lot of leaves inside, blown in because they brought back a sample for analysis, after burning the rest of the crop. noticeably the police officers stood down wind, with the pilots up wind, and there was the one conscript who we voluntold to empty it out as a present, he was complaining till he opened the door, to be met with an interior packed solid with green. went in tall and skinny, in a one piece overall, and when he was finished he looked like the Michelin man, stuffed completely full. the cops looking on, glassy eyed, till i told them he was a smoker, and they all laughed. He walked off with around 50kg in that overall.
 
It looked unnecessarily risky to my novice eyes.
If that f**ing plane had hit some kind of unexpected turbulence, clipped the stadium and took out a few hundred or thousand people in a jet fuel firestorm we'd all be singing a very different tune.
 
Same internet experts are happy to go to air shows where closer higher speed flybys are super common and crashes actually do happen
 
RaptorSA said:
It looked unnecessarily risky to my novice eyes.
If that f**ing plane had hit some kind of unexpected turbulence, clipped the stadium and took out a few hundred or thousand people in a jet fuel firestorm we'd all be singing a very different tune.
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If wishes were horses beggars would ride
 
ToxicBunny said:
100% yeah, that was epic...

But that was many a long time ago though... before that airshow disappeared for a few years
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yep, 90's era. But I remember the jet doing a touch and go and that thing was huge for the runway and crowd.

Sadly before smartphones and digital cameras, only footage I can find was the double cargo flyover , which was pretty low too but nowhere close to the T&G.

 
Decarin said:
Same internet experts are happy to go to air shows where closer higher speed flybys are super common and crashes actually do happen
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Most modern airshows don't allow aircraft to fly directly over spectators, mainly due to a number of rather horrifying airshow accidents that killed spectators in the past.

Minimum Crowd Separation Distances
    • Small / Slow Aircraft (<100 knots): Minimum distance from spectators can be 50 meters (approx. 164 feet) for standard passes, increasing for aerobatics. [1]
    • Standard / Smaller Airplanes: Federal guidelines generally mandate at least 500 feet (approx. 150 meters) of separation from the crowd line for smaller civil aircraft. [1]
    • High-Speed Jets and Large Aircraft: High-powered planes and fast jets require a minimum separation of 1,200 to 1,500 feet (366 to 457 meters) from spectator areas. [1]
    • Aerobatic Maneuvers: Separation requirements increase during aerobatics; for instance, high-speed or military aerobatic displays often require 230 meters up to 450 meters depending on the approach speed towards the crowd. [1, 2]
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Energy Vectoring: Pilots are strictly prohibited from directing their flight path or performing maneuvers directly toward the crowd line; all aerobatic energy must be projected parallel or moving away from spectators.
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I don't think you have to be an aviation expert to question whether flying passenger jets 14m over a crowded stadium through pyrotechnics with a high density residential area in the flight path behind the stadium is the wisest idea.

Fly them +100m above the stadium at a clearance that I suspect is more usual for this type of display and this wouldn't be a story. This has nothing to do with national pride, our culture of spectacular stadium flyovers or South African's reputation of being tough.

The room for error seemed very minimal and it is only reasonable to question what the worst case scenario could be if something went wrong on approach or over the stadium - would there have been sufficient altitude to bank out to sea, recover from sudden turbulence, etc etc?? I don't pretend to know the answers, but I think it clearly warrants at least asking because the fallout from an actual incident would be beyond horrendous.
 
A review makes sense, not that all the newly qualified University of YouTube aviation experts worldwide will believe anything but their own expertise.
 
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