Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Sonic Booms

Due to several airshow accidents in various countries in recent years the aerobatic display at Terracina on the 24th September last year was held over the sea with an exclusion zone for boats. There are several theories as to what happened but Orlandi performed a series of manouvres including loops and may have suffered from some problem. On the last loop he seemed to be taking too long to recover and if he had had another 20 metres or so he very well may have made it. The current theory is that he applied too much throttle at the wrong moment. There was another theory that he may have lost power at a crucial moment.

He was recognised as a highly skilled pilot and had received many awards. Tragically his parents witnessed the crash.

By the way I am not forgetting the engineer Corporal Jonathan Bayliss who was also unable to eject in time.

The Shoreham Hunter pilot has been found to be negligent and will be facing 11 counts of manslaughter, I have sympathy for him as well as those lost in the tragedy.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-43494430

The young Red Arrows Engineer I believe was fairly new into the job too I believe.

Sympathy is surely warranted because I feel that the pilot would never knowingly put him and others at risk. However, the controls by the relevant authorities should have determined the pilot unworthy of the job which has been clearly demonstrated.
My thoughts are with the families and friends of those who died and were injured in this sorry affair.

What it really highlighted was the extremely poor controls that were in place surrounding the whole air display regime.

You can only feel the utmost sympathy for those lost and their dependents - the pilot should have been grounded in light of the evidence available at the time, his display ticket was out of date if I remember correctly.

The only positive is that it has made the whole Air Display scene safer on a Global level. Much the same way it took the Herald of Free Enterprise disaster to reform the Car Ferry industry, human nature is to be complacent when things are jogging along.

Don't talk to Alis about car ferry disasters. She was on this one at 14 years old and spent several hours in the water before being rescued.







The official figures were 25 deaths, but probably many more, on the Heleanna, a Greek ferry returning at the end of the August holidays. The captain turned away from the Italian coast to enter international waters in an effort to avoid Italian justice, and he was one of the first to abandon ship. The ship was carrying more than twice the number of passengers that it was licensed for and was lacking a lot of safety equipment. Some of the boats could not be lauched because the blocks and the falls had been painted over and were jammed.

What a dreadful experience for Alis and at a very young age I'm not surprised she doesn't want anything to do with them.

I'm not surprised at the Greeks though my Son and his girlfriend were running Flottila sailing holidays for a couple of years in the Saronic Gulf. His opinion of the native support was zero, forever cutting corners and generally couldn't be bothered to get off their backsides to assist.

A dreadful experience for Alis Peter.

Virtually every day we get Tocano trainers flying low over the estuary just above the house, usually chasing each other into the Lake District Hills. I believe that they fly from RAF Valley and in the past few days must be very aware of the loss of one of their fellow flight crew. Today we had a Typhoon fly over extremely low and very fast....quite a sight!

My father flew intercept on the north coast of scotland using the real RAF (BAC) Lightnings many years ago. They had a small blackboard in the officers mess without a title. No one was ever told what it was for.

Later he told me it was a count of the number of windows they broke when taking off with the afterburners engaged whilst they were still on the ground during acceleration. The pressure wave would go across the airfield and hit the officers quarters taking out the windows. They had a deal with the repair team to register when they got cracked. The highest score every month had to buy the beers in the bar as a "penalty".

Whoops. Given my poor English language skills I am happy if that is my only error! Ta Bob.