ryan1234
Desensitized Member
There is definitely a lot of ground and flight training for the formation flights, our instructors were/are career military with very distinguished careers both within the military and on the airshow circuit. I was coming from a piston formation background (with Yak-52s and CJs), and the jet formation is significantly different... within the past 6 months has been my first exposure to jet formation stuff. Things are obviously happening faster, but there are quite a bit more variables (spool time, boards, controls at Flight Levels, etc). Each flight is briefed extensively, rejoins (or as the Navy pilots would say "Rendezvous"), nordo, etc. Safety and trust were the key points emphasized. Getting good ground and flight instruction is awesome, but tighter formation is very physically and mentally challenging and I couldn't imagine someone attempt it without being taught the framework (both mental and technical) around it. Each 'ferry' flight with the L-39s allows us to get a few hours straight of spread and close formation time - it can be really tiring! I've had the recently opportunity to get a few hours of formation IMC time - which is, so far, one the most challenging things in aviation that I've done. It can really mess with you. Hacker and MikeD are really the authorities on formation stuff, and I'm just in the kindergarten stages of everything, but I'm thankful to have been getting great instruction! It's amazing that you don't know what you don't know... in respect to formation stuff.
The Biz jet form flight doesn't really have too much an interesting story behind it other than both aircraft needed to be moved to another airport and it was a good chance for a photo-flight. Once again, it was extensively briefed and each person at the controls had a lot of formation time with other jets.
