Originally Posted by
KrisKringle
It seems like a lot of people 'screwed up' or at least failed to perform their roles to an adequate standard: regulatory, supervisory, management and administration. If any of these roles had been performed diligently, an accident would not have been a tragedy.
Exactly ^^^^
A pilot in a single engine plane is one human being. As such there is always the possibility of a mistake or incapacity and if that happens sometimes the consequences can be catastrophic. In other circumstances the same mistake or incapacity may lead to either no damage at all or be confined to the plane itself and / or its pilot.
There are many circumstances around this tragedy that could have been avoided with better planning and also other failings that could potentially have led to a different accident.
For example, as a reaction to this incident, the centre of the airshow display point at Duxford has been moved further from the M11 and the public road that passes the end of the runway at Old Warden is now closed during flying displays. Had similar measures been in place at Shoreham there would have be fewer (if any) casualties.