Originally Posted by
pulse1
I saw the collision at Fairford and I do not remember seeing any relevant cloud.. The wreckage of one of them did crash near a parked C130. I also witnessed the accident at Farnborough when an Atlantique crashed. That did fall on local infrastructure killing a lorry driver.
I thought the incident was partly attributed to one of the Migs moving out of position and when he tried to inform the other pilot, his transmission was blocked by a long conversation on the display frequency between ATC and another aircraft which was not involved with the Migs.
At Farnborough we already had a policy of no other aircraft on the display frequency and having separate TWR/GMC and Display frequencies in order to prevent unwanted 'distractions' like this and additionally the Flying Control Committee having access to the display frequency via a handheld so it's unlikely such a thing would occur at Farnborough. This was later reflected in the CAA Instructions to display organisers that there must be separate TWR and Display frequencies.
NB: Part of my job was requesting sufficient extra frequencies for the duration of the air show, allocating their use and writing the relevant instructions to other controllers.