Milt
You are the first to express your need for more hands on training. I guess you do it all with the buttons and knobs and simulators these days. It's not your fault and I am not trying to put you down.
You certainly are - I did not express a need for more hands on training, I said that for airline pilots low passes are untrained and unpracticed.
I've done faster and lower passes in a previous fast-jet life, which was followed by thirty years with five UK airlines. I would never consider doing one that low in an airliner - but it can be fun in a simulator, because it satisfies that particular part of my pilot's brain. And therein lies the problem - we like to do it because it's fun. It can lead to disaster - and I'm sure it will again one day.
In general, low-flying is prohibited (I mean low, not 500'agl) because it is not as safe as medium or high-level flying.
Can you show us footage of a test pilot at Farnborough Airshow flying that low in an airliner? If that pass had been performed at said airshow the pilot would not have been given the opportunity to repeat it. Why? Safety that's why.
All I am saying is that the fly by was ABSOLUTELY safe in the hands of the pilot in command whose attested skill has been adequately confirmed and that there is now my gnawing concern that there may be airline captains confessing to their inability to safely fly a repeat. These are the ones I don't want to fly with as their hands on skills are inadequate.
"Absolutely safe?" Please tell me you are joking. The list of display pilots whose attested skill had been adequately confirmed up to the day of their death grows longer every year.
Airline flying is not about being macho in an aircraft - it's about hauling your ass around the world as safely as possible, safer than the laws of the land, safer than your company Ops Manual. The history of aviation is littered with the bones of pilots who thought they could hack it - and the pubs and golf courses should be full of old pilots enjoying a glorious retirement. And their passengers.
As a wise USMC aviator once said to me - if you're in a low-flying contest, always aim to come second.
Incidentally, another "senior Cathay Pacific pilot" is reported in the Guardian thus.. (and I am sure there are others that disagree with him)..
"Maiden flights are treated as a bit of a jolly for executives with lots of champagne flowing and these fly-bys used to be done for a wheeze in the old days. But they are dangerous, because however good the pilot thinks he is, he isn't trained for it and the planes aren't designed for it.
"Wilkinson was showing off, and most of the pilots might be sympathetic but they feel he got what he deserved when he was sacked."
TP