PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Airshow related accidents
View Single Post
Old 21st Apr 2019, 15:23
  #57 (permalink)  
BEagle
 
Join Date: May 1999
Location: Quite near 'An aerodrome somewhere in England'
Posts: 26,805
Received 270 Likes on 109 Posts
The weekend before the Fairford Mig 29 collision, I'd been at Hradec Kralove in the Czech Republic with a VC10K3 on static display at their air show. Which included the same pair of MiGs. "That looks bloody sporting", we thought of their display - and promptly christened them 'The Dangerous Brothers' after the Rik Mayall and Ade Edmondson comedy duo...

Apart from the near miss of the Typhoon at RIAT in 2005, the only other near accidents I've witnessed at air shows were a CF-18 at the Abbotsford Air Show on a very hot day in August 1987 which missed the ground by not very much (20 ft I heard later) pulling out of a loop and an F-111 at the last Alconbury air show in 1993 which came steaming in at high speed with wings full swept, turned hard and went into serious wing rock. I was chatting with a Tornado mate at the time and we both said "Did you just see what I saw?" - we thought he was about to depart. The next day he came in much the same, except with the wings rather less swept.

Then there was a B-1B at Griffiss AFB in July 1988 - it came in low and fast and pulled up into an impressive vertical manoeuvre... Rather too impressive as it turned out, I later chatted with their crew chief, a real old-time SAC character, who merely said "Young asshole overstressed my jet - we'll be here for days!"....

So fortunately no fatals, but a few rather tense moments!
BEagle is offline