BV - "I see more similarities with the Car Fest event and Shoreham to be honest."
100%
Ex-mil FJs are expensive to operate - even more so than a SEP Warbird (with the exception of acquisition cost & hull cost insurance). Therefore, selected pilots fly few hours with irregular currency. Perhaps its time for a more stringent look at "who flies what" in front of the public. By all means, if you have the money and can afford the training, take your Spitfire, P51 or JP up for a dance amongst the clouds at Medium Level (which is 500ft and above in my terms…). I am, however, very nervous when I see the same set of names dynamically displaying lots of different aircraft with relatively low hours on each in front of the public. Yes, I appreciate that this could cause issues and the increased costs might remove popular aircraft from public display, but there's nowt to stop the larger operators restricting their pilots to a couple of types to display, and rotating every couple of years. It might encourage the training and selection of new pilots, and prevent the "he's a great bloke, everybody likes/rates him, he's got thousands of hours - I'm sure he'll be fine displaying the Gnat/JP/Hunter/T33 with less than enough hours for a Prog Check on an OCU spread out over 3 years…." oh, and of course, no simulator to practise emergencies in. The
Boultbee Spitfire simulator initiative is to be applauded, and, IMHO, should be something that Insurance companies start to insist that pilots conduct recurrent training in, including emergencies at various stages of their display. sequence...