Obviously, sympathy and condolences to all involved. 2002 was not a good year for Yaks and 2003 has not started much better.
The other appropriate quote is from an unknown source (not me), which strikes a chord with my thinking on the matter:
If I ever kill myself flying, I would ask but one thing from you all.
Learn as much as you can from whatever I did wrong, but don't waste your sympathy. It will have happened in the context of a pastime I love with an enduring passion, in full knowledge of the inherent risks, and in attempting to minimise them through knowledge, practice, and care.
But I'm fallible, like all of us, so nothing is guaranteed.
If I have destroyed a beautiful aeroplane by my carelessness, I'm sorry. All aeroplanes are, of course, beautiful.
If I have hurt anyone else in the accident, again, I apologise, unless they were of like mind, aware of the risks, and making a free and informed choice to fly with me.
The way the human spirit is lifted in flight is more important than the life of any one individual pilot. There will be pilots, but there may not always be the historic and rare aircraft to be flown by them. Such aircraft are pointers to the heritage in whose shadow we all stand and enjoy our privileges, but when another one dies, so too does another small fragment of our connection to that heritage.
This is the real tragedy of Biggin and Rouen, and why it is important to remain connected to the history of man's adventures in the air, not just in books and museums. It is also the real tragedy of the loss of airfields, and the growing band of noise complainers. This lifting of the human spirit is increasingly denied to more and more, and replaced by a smallmindedness that impoverishes the soul.
And if any cynic out there denies that aeroplanes have their own life that encapsulates and reflects much of ours, go into a hangar full of them one evening, and in the quiet broken only by the wind rattling the hangar doors, listen very carefully.
If you hear nothing, maybe your soul needs a 50 hour check.
RIP