Quote from Dreamland:
I'm afraid getting permission by the tower has nothing to do with breaking FAR's, if he exceeded a speed limit or operated the low approach below 500 AGL, he could face certificate action. Most professional pilots understand this.
[Unquote]
Haven't been follwing this thread till tonight, and have no opinion (yet) on whether the pilot should have been sacked. But what Dreamland says in relation to approach below 500ft being illegal makes no sense. How could base training ever be conducted if, even with ATC permission, aircraft were forbidden from practising low approaches and go-arounds? Cannot comment on FARs with passengers on board - is that what you are getting at?
Quote from Ali Sadikin:
If my memory serves me right, there was a 1998 A320 prang at Basel Mulhouse and another at Habsheim. There was also a A330 crash by the Airbus test flight. In UK you should know better!!!!!!!
[Unquote]
Wrong. There was only one silly stunt leading to an accident on an A320. The aircraft took off from Basel-Mulhouse on a scheduled passenger flight. There was an airshow going on at nearby-Habsheim (a small airstrip, too small for A320). The captain decided to do a low-slow fly-by, ran out of energy, and pancaked into a forest.
The A330 accident was on a training flight at Toulouse-Blagnac, exploring the effects of an engine failure during an auto-coupled go-around. This is the sort of manoeuvre that pilots have to practise, unfortunately. The training captain was also an Airbus test pilot, and a very careful operator. Irrelevant to this topic.