Murdoughnut
Well sized member
The recent crash involving an L-39 at an airshow in Iowa got me thinking - what experience should be required to fly a fighter in formation at a public event such as this? Now I know the default JC response is that everyone should be able to fly anything anywhere at anytime with any training and with an aircraft in any condition - but I'm hoping some of you who fly military fighters could chime in.
This is absolutely not to infer that this pilot's experience had anything to do with the accident, but the accident pilot in Iowa was a civilian with 2,000 total hours, and about 600 in jets. This is probably comparable to many military pilots who fly airshow exhibitions, but obviously they're cut from a different cloth.
It seems that older trainer fighters are popular among wealthy business types - and of course aviation has a storied history of smoking holes with the remains of confident business execs in airplanes they couldn't handle. All fine and well, but one has to wonder about the safety of such at a populated event such as an airshow.
Just throwing it out there - if folks think that 700 hours jet time is too little to fly passengers, I wonder what they think about turbine airshow performers.
This is absolutely not to infer that this pilot's experience had anything to do with the accident, but the accident pilot in Iowa was a civilian with 2,000 total hours, and about 600 in jets. This is probably comparable to many military pilots who fly airshow exhibitions, but obviously they're cut from a different cloth.
It seems that older trainer fighters are popular among wealthy business types - and of course aviation has a storied history of smoking holes with the remains of confident business execs in airplanes they couldn't handle. All fine and well, but one has to wonder about the safety of such at a populated event such as an airshow.
Just throwing it out there - if folks think that 700 hours jet time is too little to fly passengers, I wonder what they think about turbine airshow performers.