One fact says it all for me. The people ‘running’ the programme have one aircraft to manage. The sole purpose of this aircraft is to appear at air shows. The annual Permit to Fly and C of A renewals fall smack in the middle of the air show season.
If there was any commonsense at all in ‘management’ then someone would have raised an eyebrow and thought, ‘Hmm, risky. Let’s bring the renewals forward to February/March, just in case’. They didn’t – and they’ve exposed themselves, again, as a bunch of dodgy amateurs.
The CAA will have done all it could to help out, I’m sure of that, but this incident will have demolished any remaining goodwill from Gatwick.