It would be fascinating to understand what gains versus loses the plethora of rules and regs actually has…..
Personally, I’d feel much better about ticking along at 300 feet with a career pilot who knows his stuff than, say, the Air France 447 crew who couldn’t handle a minor error.
Rules and regs have the veneer of safety but if you over proceedurise (I’m into new words for the Oxford Dictionary) to the detriment of actual underlying ability then I start to wonder.
It’s pretty unlikely he was going to stuff it, which of course he did not, but then again I think we would all be pretty scared to fly in aircraft when two crew are so disabled by panic they cannot make even the most basic sense of having throttles closed for about a minute could in anyway be confused with overspeed.
Just a thought ….
It’s pretty unlikely he was going to stuff it, which of course he did not
Yes, no doubt he himself would not budge a low pass as such. But the point is that he moved the needle towards “risk on” for a lot of unwitting pax, subjecting them to events beyond his control. I’m thinking about an engine failure, or maybe the Sullenberger Scenario is a better example.
Also, I wonder if he announced his trick to the pax. If he did, maybe most would have been – sort of – prepared. If he didn’t, many would have really been worried to put it mildly, especially those who would see that they were not on a normal approach to Kevlavik. I wonder what I would have felt and would have done when passing the flight deck while disembarking. How would you forumites have felt and reacted? How would people with a fear of flying have enjoyed the event?
In general, we as pilots bear a lot of responsibility towards pax and people on the ground. Even if flying solo, I am careful to say that you can do what you want just because it’s your life. Even if you don’t hit anyone on the ground, you cause grief to family, friends and colleagues or people who depend on you in whatever way, unless you don’t have any, which is rare, being such a special person as a pilot is 
This lowpass showing off stuff is BS in a small plane (tons of lethal accidents) and even more so in an airliner with pax onboard. Retire gracefully as a professional with a water cannon salute while taxiing in vs. going out as a cowboy.
I’m all for single seat aircraft 
Too few around of those. It would be rather remarkable if he didn’t announce this to the passengers. I would think this was part of the “operation” ?, I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
I was at Heimaey a couple of years ago. It’s the island of Vestnammaeyer where the town is, the largest island. Pretty strange history. When Norwegian and Norwegian/gaelish (Norse Gaels) people populated Iceland, they first went to Ireland to grab some slaves along. Mostly young women. At some point some of them and their first descendants rebelled and populated Heimaey. The Vikings just let them live there, and the isleland soon became just a part of Iceland. Slaves on Iceland were called Vestmenn, since they all came from “the west” meaning Ireland at that time. Hence the name Vestmannaeyar literally means the Islands of Vestmenn.
Moral of the story. The pilot is essentially Irish, which perhaps explains a thing or two
It would be fascinating to understand what gains versus loses the plethora of rules and regs actually has…..
Airlines don’t do low passes with pax aboard just because the pilots find it entertaining. That rule makes sense, for once.
The origin of the rule is many accidents in all kinds of aviation (private, military, airline..).
@LeSving wrote:
Moral of the story. The pilot is essentially Irish, which perhaps explains a thing or two
Thanks for the history lesson!
Airlink does a flyby of the DHL stadium in Cape Town for the Springboks v All Blacks rugby match.
Looks like people will complain even when it’s ‘done properly’ by the airline: three captains on board, no passengers, and SA CAA approval. According to the BBC it’s a regular occurence. At <50’ the photos are impressive:
Does that look safe to you flying through the middle of fireworks this low over a packed stadium? What happens if the aircraft hit a downdraft at that height? There is a great deal of scepticism about the claim that a 50 feet flyover was approved by the SA CAA. The SA CAA itself has not yet commented. It will be interesting to see what they have to say.
a1650772 wrote:
What happens if the aircraft hit a downdraft at that height?
Yes, what happens if ? I don’t think this is the right way to look at stuff like this or safety in general. It leads to nowhere. Every possible scenario can happen if. Ultimately the only solutions to all these “ifs” is to stop living altogether, at least stop flying. I bet a proper risk assessment would reveal this flying to be as risky as a normal approach over any populated area.
A more interesting question is the necessity of it. I certainly don’t want to answer that, but it for sure tells a story of a nation who is not exactly afraid of ghosts
The lower aircraft doesn’t seem to leave much room. To the point that I start to look at the photo and wonder how much closer the tail was than the nose. I’d be surprised if that close a flight was authorised.
What would the down draft be from such an aircraft at such a high angle of attack, so close to the top of the roof? Is there a risk to dislodging some of the roof onto the fan below, simply from the downdraft / wake?
If I was the owner of the aircraft, I don’t think I’d like the idea of the fireworks / smoke getting into the expensive engines. I wonder was that factored into the decision making?
