When questioning the attitude of RAF QFIs past and present and the fear of the chop among students, let's not forget what we are training for. We operate in an environment where the price of error may be death, not necessarily just your own, and not even just those involved in the crash, but also those relying on your success to save them. I have in the past given the benefit of the doubt to a young pilot, then later had to offer comfort to his grieving parents after the accident. Subsequently, I have had no compunction in explaining to a student that I may be saving his life while denying his dream.
Regarding the conduct of TV production teams, I think back to my involvement in one long forgotten series. They had been offered a high level of support, so went on to abuse it fully. One episode involved a pilot stealing a Harrier after a training sortie at an east coast range. First, they wanted film of Sneb rockets hitting the target, with the camera looking up from the target. The first pilot (now also dead) put 2 full pods just short, giving spectacular results. But they decided that they wanted the rockets to hit the centre, sacrificing the camera, images from which would be captured remotely. So I took a second jet to Holbeach, and destroyed their kit with another 2 full, and expensive, pods. To complete the sequence, they needed better shots of the aircraft in the range pattern, but by the time we had the weather, they had moved on to Brawdy for another episode. So off I went to Wales to do both bits. The first brief was that they had been given a Sea King, so from this airborne platform, they wanted to film me passing by, approaching from the front quarter and approaching from the rear quarter. Neither the helicopter nor the ground would be seen. I queried what they would see different in the two approaching shots; they agreed that they would be the same, so one would do. I queried why it would look different from the Sea King rather than on the ground; it wouldn't, so we cancelled that bit. This reduced the sequence to me flying once past and once over a camera on the airfield.
Then we moved on to the next episode. This involved gun runners in an Islander. I was to intercept the Islander and use visual intercept signals to get it to land. So I had to fly alongside, waggle my wings in an obvious manner, then turn away to get them to follow. Aware that my wings would not produce much lift below 150 kts or so, I asked at what speed they intended to fly. 90 kts was the answer. How fast could they fly? 120 kts. So it turned into a fairly short sequence, with me formating partially jet-borne, a configuration in which "wing-waggling" tends to lead to a considerable loss of lift, while the reversal gets perilously close to a risky corner of the Harrier flight envelope (covered at length in another thread).
At the end of all that, I went home and made sure I was not around for any further request for help.
In my experience, a common factor of many aircraft accidents has been the camera filming the event.
