After a tragic and shocking event like the air crash at the Shoreham Air Show in which possibly 20 or more people were killed it would be expected that there would be a feeding frenzy from the Press with all sorts of claims, accusations and wild assertions being made. You’d expect the BBC, as an organisation that has no papers to sell and no axe to grind, to stand back and take a considered look at the crash and its surrounding circumstances. However listening to John Humphrys this morning on the Today programme (08:10) when he was haranguing John Turner, chairman of the British Air Display Association, I got the impression that this was an interview driven more by emotion and anger, with a good dose of holier than thou sanctimony mixed in with a little bit of ignorance than a measured news interview. Consider also that the pilot of the aircraft, Andy Hill, was very experienced, ex-RAF Harrier pilot, and no doubt very ‘responsible’ and would have been highly aware of the risks and no doubt shaped his display to ensure it was as safe as possible…..something that Humphrys seems to have overlooked.
Humphrys’ thrust was that the Airshow had been highly irresponsible in allowing the aircraft to display overland and that, obviously, it should have been done over the sea….because there was nowhere for a plane to crash land should the need arise.
Well let’s have a look at Shoreham and see…I’ve put the video of the crash at the top of the post so that you can see that the aircraft approached from wide open countryside and did the loop the loop whilst in open country.
The Mail provides this graphic to show that the people on the road were incredibly unlucky to be hit…and note that the runway is actually directly next to the crash site…so a plane taking off or landing, not doing aerobatics, could have crashed in exactly the same spot….
Look on Google Earth and you can check out the exact layout of the land and you can see that to the north is the open country, to the south is the sea with urban areas either side….there is plenty of space for an air show.
What do the Red Arrows do? Do they display overland and built up areas? Yes they do…
….but here’s their latest at Bournemouth where they displayed over the sea but also flew over land…..
The Daily Mail and the Mirror , amongst others in the Press, have got another angle on this…the Red Arrows, they tell us, won’t fly over Shoreham because it’s too dangerous….well, they may have changed their criteria since 2009, but here’s the Red Arrows at Shoreham in 2009 flying north to south:
But let’s go back to John Humphrys and his outrage at the Shoreham Airshow’s dangerous ‘irresponsibility’….what has he got to say about Farnborough?…once again Google Earth it and you can see the surrounding area is massively built up with even less open land.
Here’s the Red Arrows flying overland at Farnborough last year…
If you are going to pillory someone on national radio, on the BBC’s prime news programme, at the prime slot of 08:10, then you’d better get things right and in perspective….perhaps he should read the BBC’s archives…here they could have told him that a Red Arrows plane crashed, after displaying over the sea, on land. Perhaps Humphrys thinks the planes should take off and land at sea just to be really safe.
As far as I can tell this interview was pure emotion and ignorance. The deaths were shocking and tragic but to start whipping up outrage and sounding off about practically closing down air displays is highly disproportionate and wrongheaded based on a complete misreading of the situation and a lack of perspective.
Certainly things need to be looked over as always but to hang someone out to dry based on your own prejudice isn’t news or even considered opinion, it’s a kangaroo court.
Remember Locherbie? What would Humphrys say about the routing of airliners using this extreme case as an example?
I saw one over Buckingham palace with the Queen watching as the aircraft headed directly towards her. But this was the Golden Jubilee fly past, not the Luftwaffe bombing of the palace in the 1940’s.
Talking about Buckingham Palace, what ever happened to that naked man who was filmed climbing out of a window and falling to the ground?
He’s still there…
John
I believe Philip eventually found his way back to his bedroom!
I know the area very well as my daughter lives very close and we often go to the airfield for lunch. It was a tragic accident and everybody involved was really unlucky. There is plenty of open land as you say.
Humphrey’s attitude it typical of that lot. They would be better occupied in asking exactly how a terrorrist gets on a train armed to the teeth and what the hell is going on with Isis and returning so called jihadis. .There luck was definitely on the side of the good guys.
The longer the BBC goes on the more it becomes clear just how useless it is.
In this case the BBC are just doing what all other media outlets do which is to maximise the tragedy and allow naked, unrestrained emotion to be on open display. This is a reflection of modern British society , which of course the BBC has done so much to shape over the past 50 years. Time was when we were noted for not displaying our emotions in public no matter how keenly felt they were. Now if you don’t blub and wail you are considered to be odd. Just look how the queen was treated when Diana died and she kept her emotions under control. The media were full of anger because she was so restrained and dignified.
The other factor is that there will be a witch hunt to find a culprit or at least something to blame. The BBC in common with the rest of the media will be leading the charge. The government will then be pressured into forcing air shows to be ‘safer’. In the 50’s when there was a multiple death incident at Farnborough the show went on with the next display immediately! I am not saying that this was the right thing to do but it illustrates how much public attitudes have changed.
One of the consequences of this attitude that there must always be a reaction from government to every tragedy, is that the government interferes more and more in our daily lives. This suits the liberal left who really want to control just about everything the ordinary citizen does and maximise the size of government. This really does seem a ratchet from which there is no escape until public attitudes change. But that is a long, long way off.
With all due respect to all concerned
I didn’t hear Humphrys – I’m a long-standing cultural refugee from Radio 4. Sadly, I once regarded the place as my home, that was many years ago but the regime there made me feel increasingly persecuted over time. Eventually they drove me out and in search of a better life as they say I sought asylum elsewhere – but that’s another long story.
I’m no fan of the ‘elf n safety init, and can’t claim to be an expert on aeronautics, but I must admit for some time prior to this tragic accident I have been a little uneasy about the continued leisure use of wartime and vintage aircraft way past their expected lifespans. A Spitfire or a 1950s jet, as evocative and as beautiful as they may look, just wern’t built to be an airbus. However, I recall enjoying airshows on tv probably presented by the likes of Raymond Baxter on the BBC. I believe coverage of airshows ‘went the way of all English flesh’ as far as the BBC are concerned – filed somewhere between Cricket and respectful coverage of Royal Events.
Camped out in the uncomfortable staging post of BBC Breakfast I have, at least, however, learned to appreciate ‘floral tributes’ stuck into the stancheons of dual carriageway bridges by who-knows-who persons connected in who-knows-what way with the victims as yet uncounted and (mostly) unnamed by facebook or Twitter and to be more than patient with the Police authorities busy out there measuring their own skidmarks usefully dragging the story out and keeping other items off the top of news.
As a former fairly regular spectator at air shows perhaps I can reassure you with the thought that these aircraft, like their vintage & classic racing car equivalents, are probably in better shape now than at any time in their operating lives. Not only are checks and modern engineering knowledge and standards higher but the technicians who lovingly care for their charges are not under the pressure say, of war-time mechanics when being bombed regularly & having to have a damaged Hurricane at least in the air the next day, if only to escape the next raid although ideally be combat ready.
I think it reasonable to assume that the people who looked after this Hunter will be devastated by what has happened even if it was a completely inexplicable accident.
I believe Edward VIII, while still the Prince of Wales in the 20’s, was sent on a tour of the coal-fields of Wales (correct me if the details are incorrect).
He notoriously exclaimed ‘Something must be done!’, returned to his own place, and apparently thought no more about the poor miners – ever.
A pioneer of ‘virtue signalling’ (I love this term, which I guess came up through Twitter), he has been followed by a long line of practitioners of this dubious art.
Mr Humphrys continues the tradition with today’s brow-beating agenda-driven excuse for an interview – I hope he does indeed feel virtuous for having harangued and interrupted his interviewee, treating him at times as if he was some kind of social criminal.
Mr Humphrys managed to combine polishing his moral credentials with a side-swipe at what he appeared to view as a privileged and complacent minority, ‘people who put on or go to air displays’. His clear insinuation was that this distasteful and culturally divisive group of people were wilfully practising their spectatorship at the expense of everyone else, without remotely caring that their activities put others at risk.
Just like those international bankers, in fact.
Tragic as the Shoreham disaster undoubtedly was, it was the first accident of its kind in decades and this sort of knee-jerk hysteria is a wholly inappropriate response.
Sadly, it is absolutely typical of the BBC and the misery-media (I’m sure there’s a word in German for that) to whip-up a nice, frothy batch of outrage and ruin an ordinarily harmless pursuit.
In 1952, when there was an even more tragic crash at the Farnbrough show, the British public came out in their thousands the following day and the show went ahead as planned.
But we were a different, stronger, people then, before our native stoicism and fortitude had been sapped and drained away by a generation of nannies, busybodies and killjoys.
It is they who are the real threat to this country, not vintage aircraft.
LOST MY INTERNET CONNECTION DUE TO THE WEATHER AS I WAS POSTING THIS EARLIER – MY APOLOGIES IF I DUPLICATE ANYTHING UNDULY
The problem for me now with John Humphrys, perhaps as a result of Dead Ringers, is that he seems to deliberately or accidentally parody himself on occasions. I also get the impression that he normally chooses carefully when to do it when it is deliberate. Today, if delibertae, it was rather insensitive.
As an aside, a greater problem for me is that some younger, newer BBC correspondents feel that they need to copy his style. One of the Business Correspondents is especially bad in this respect.
A far greater shortcoming, in my view, was the lack of research that had gone into statements in the news and on news programmes. A simple online check would show that flying accidents at displays around the world happen regularly and that UK shows tend to have quite a good safety record although there are fairly regular accidents. Mostly the pilots are killed or injured and spectators escape injury. The 1952 Farnborough Air Show was completely forgotten in some references to Shoreham. No-one at the BBC, whether broadcasters or newsroom or ‘Back Desk’ appears to have any knowledge of display flying or air shows. Someone at the BBC must have attended one or more at some time. No reference to the display envelope or box, at all. Then there was the geography. No reference to the distance between the field and its likely display box and the A27.
Journalistic & editing standards at the BBC appear to be collapsing just at the very moment when the opposite is needed to help with enhancing their case for the continuation and possible increase of the Licence Fee.
Air Show attendees are 99% British white. I’ve been to many air shows and there’s such an airfield near my home.
This ethnic composition doesn’t suit the BBC/Left’s ambitions. In their view, we need to move on from celebrating our militaristic past.
If such a tragedy had happened at an Islamic event, the BBC/Left would have sought solutions to ease the muslims’ pain without any criticism or suggestion that a ban be imposed.
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Sorry, but like the BBC, you do not seem to understand air shows either. They are definitely not ‘celebrating our militaristic past’. If anything, there would be sympathy for the recipients of what a warplane might do as well as respect for the enemy combatants in their equivalent machines. Not all of the craft on show or demonstrated would necessarily be military either. They are all about respect which, to my mind, is a little lacking in your post.
The shows are about flying, the craft designed to do so and the pilots who flew or currently fly in them. They are about human endeavour whether for adventure of breaking free of earths bounds or defending one’s land and people or enabling travel or even aid in times of emergency or great need.
I object to your last paragraph which is very much not in the spirit of air shows or flying for whatever purpose.
Pure emotion,ignorance ,disproportionate ,wrong-headed, lack of perspective,prejudiced and presiding over a kangaroo court. Just about sums up that twit Humphreys and the rest of the BBC hacks. Good job we’re all used to it.