Originally Posted by
RNHF_PILOT
I think most of the points made by LOONRAT and LOMCEVAK are fairly well known and understood amongst the UK display flying community. However, I am interested to know what the feeling of US display pilots and display pilots from other countries are towards these points. I have not attended or participated in an airshow outside the UK but judging by a number of videos I have seen on YouTube and other SM over the years, there are some spectacular and highly skilled displays flown but I do wonder how much margin of error they have because a lot of it looks like its on the absolutely limit of what the aircraft and pilot can do.
North America has a significantly better record for air show crashes as compared to Europe. The Hunter crash for example would not have occurred in Canada or the USA because the display box was much smaller than the allowed for this category of aircraft and the pilots display validation would not have been valid based on the fact that his last assessment was flown on a small home built aircraft (RV 8j. This pilot would have been disqualified from flying this show. The blow back from this event has sadly and frankly typical of UK aviation, turned into much bureaucratic box ticking instead of actual evaluation of pilot skills by qualified and arms length evaluators.