Originally posted by Mini D
Most U.S. air shows use unmodified combat aircraft too. The only real exceptions are the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels, but they actually make up a small percentage of flight demonstrations at airshows.
We have only several airshows a year all over the country, with only 4 famous groups performing group aerobatics, and in the Ukraine they had to ferry a single plane across the whole country to show something to public... What they had in L'vov isn't called an "airshow" here. It was a "demonstration flight at a city festival".
Russian Knights fly Su-27, Swifts - MiG-29s, Sky Hussars - Su-25s, Rus' - L-39 Albatros. Only L-39 is an attak/trainer. We don't have almost any private aviation here, laws are even more stupid then in other fields, and DOSAAF (Army, Navy and Air Force assistance society, that trained youth for service) is almost completely destroyed now. Several aged pilots formed another aerobatic team flying DOSAAF L-29s "Dolphin" (I wonder where they found them and how they made them fly again).
It's interesting how Knights appeared. Back in 1947 VVS pilots were afraid of new jet fighters, Yak-15s and MiG-9s, Marshall Eugeniy Savitskiy formed an aerobatics team in Kubinka to show capabilities of Yak-15s. They trained to perform aerobatics in a formation of 5 around leader, what famous pilots of the 30s did. Later they changed many plane types and team pilots, but they still exist... I can't imagine a Marshall, a person at Savitskiy's rank, making a tour around some forgotten airfields to show new planes to pilots in our new times...
Originally posted by Mini D
The routine for every airshow I've been at in a work capacity in the U.S. (used to work with a mobile control tower) was to have familiarization flights with all of the arial demonstration pilots. There were briefings where aproach paths, speed restrictions, altitude restrictions and everything else were discussed. It wasn't a matter of telling the pilots where the people were and asking the pilots to avoid them.
In L'vov they never flew at the airshow location with full fuel load, and pilots were misinformed about flight zone. Ukrainian "justice" hanged everything on pilots, only to save some fat bellybutton with stripes on trousers who was in charge of the preparation.
Originally posted by Mini D
The thing about that video that amazes me is the same thing that happened at Mt. Home: The pilot was way too low to try the maneuver he was performing. In Mt. Home, it was due to a pilot incorrectly setting his altimeter and doing the maneuver properly. The cause of this one seems to be a pilot not fully understanding what he was doing and how much room he'd need to recover. It almost looks unrehersed.
They didn't realise that the plane is too heavy with full fuel load, and hit the tree tops, then - rammed into the crowd... Try to search for other photos of the crash, it was absolutely horrible
meat grinder
