Some risks just cannot be avoided
NO ONE would deny that the multi- death accident at the Shoreham Air Show when a Hawker Hunter jet crashed on to a main road was a desperately sad tragedy. But very predictably voices were raised to say air shows should now be banned or certain types of aircraft prohibited. I cannot agree.
It seems to me there are three types of risk. One is the small risk we all encounter simply living a normal life. Cross the road – there’s a risk or no one would ever be knocked down. Drive a car – risk. Board a train to work – well, trains crash too. Short of living in a cocoon in the sitting room every moment of life, or at least every activity, has a tiny element of risk.
Then there are the self- induced risks. Every year people die riding horses, swimming at sea, even in pools. People have fatal accidents in cars, on motor cycles, fl ying light aircraft, being a passenger in a helicopter, parachuting, sky- diving, climbing mountains or sea- angling. But no one forces you to do any of these things. So self- induced risk is incurred. Should they all be forbidden? What a zestless life it would be.
Lastly there is wrong- time wrong- place tragedy. The victim was doing absolutely nothing when the rotten tree fell, the cliff crumbled, the scaffolding collapsed. Air displays are within this category.
Why would a classic aircraft, meticulously maintained, fl own by an ace, be more dangerous than a trainee pilot on his fi rst solo? No one can foresee every single conceivable eventuality.
The Hunter that crashed on the A27 at Shoreham was out of control, zooming out of its loop too low. Had the pilot fainted? Did the elevators refuse to work, making a pull- up impossible? We may know one day but not for months yet as experts pore over the fragments.
But the cries are out: ban air displays. Well, ban classic aircraft. Well, ban aerobatics. Well, conduct them only over the Yorkshire moors. Or over the sea. But even here there are risks. An out- of- control aircraft can cover a mile in a few seconds. How far away do you want them? Out of sight? And if a crippled aircraft swerves towards a spectator- crowded beach? The carnage would be enormous.
The fact the Hawker at Shoreham sliced down a dual- carriage was pure malign coincidence. A few yards left or right and it would have gone down in open farmland. Elsewhere it might have ploughed into a housing estate or a hospital or a school.
The loop, of which I have done many, is supposed to end at the same height as it started with the aircraft horizontal, parallel to the earth beneath and still well above it. But the Hawker Hunter just went on diving so something went wrong. But it did not have to be a loop. It could have been any of four or fi ve different rolls but once power and control are gone it is going to crash.
Look up at the sky. Every day thousands of airliners pass over us. They cannot crash? Of course they can. Six years ago an airliner over the heart of New York experienced four- engine failure. The captain brilliantly put it down on the Hudson River. No casualties – not one. But if it had smashed into Manhattan? The Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn? Do airliners fl y low and slow over cities still? Of course they do.
Once you start to ban – on the basis of a tiny possible risk – anything that fl ies, or rolls, or runs, where do you stop?