Originally Posted by
Basil
A valid point for those of us who have placed ourselves in harms way but not so for uninvolved people on a public highway.
I'm interested to know if you apply this standard to other aspects of life other than aviation?
What I mean is that trying to protect others from the consequences of your actions becomes unworkable if you think about it for a little while.
For example:-
1. Shall I take my car for a nice drive today?
If we subject that idea to the same inspection that you want to do to an aerobatic display, we would have to ask.
a. Am I adding risk to "uninvolved people on a public highway" who have not volunteered to accept that risk? Demonstrably yes for any car journey.
b. Will the emissions from my car adversely affect others who have not given their permission? Yes, both in the short term with pollution and long term global warming. You might argue that this is not the same as killing some spectators, but I would argue that you are adding to a cumulative effect that has the potential to wipe out civilisation.
Added to this is the fact that using fuel supports medieval regimes who rely on the wests greed for oil thus perpetuating the horror their people suffer.
2. Shall I go on holiday?
a. Am I adding risk to others by adding to the number of flights over their head? Obviously yes.
b. Am I polluting thus affecting the health of others? Yes, Obviously.
My point is that everything we do has a greater or lessor effect on others. I am never quite sure why we hold aviation to completely different standards to any other industry.
Cars on roads kill 1 million people per year.
Shoreham was a spectacular one-off, equal to winning the lottery 3 weeks in a row.
My own personal belief is that the only reason we hold flight to different rules is that for some reason flight has glamour and excitement and fear attached to it.