Airshow safety is front of mind again after a season of accidents and close calls. I turn to an old friend, the late Major General Des Barker, SAAF (Ret’d), and his seminal book into display accidents. With an average of 28 display accidents and incidents, 13 display pilots killed per year, this low level environment remains incredibly dangerous.
On Wednesday 23 September, the Royal Canadian Air Force began its transformation to become a 5th Gen fighter force with the first flight of the CF-35 at the Lockheed Martin factory in Fort Worth, Texas. Many, many years in the making, the revolutionary capabilities of the F-35 will soon be in the hands of Canadian fighter pilots. And the rest of the RCAF must change to adapt to this powerful, lethal and survivable platform.
In 1987, I was a 28-year-old flying the CF-18 at the Paris Air Show. McDonnell Douglas who made the Hornet had asked the Canadian Air Force to perform at the Paris Air Show on their behalf and that task was given to me as part of my CF-18 demo season. I was completely under the pressure of it all. I took it to mean I had to fly the Hornet as aggressively as I possibly could to show it off, and my fangs came out. Luckily for me, my Wing Commander stepped in and gave me a very timely lesson in leadership which helped save me from doing anything more dangerous than I already had.
A Polish F-16 demo fatality. A mid-air collision between two USN Growlers during a demo. A Blue Angels F/A-18 beach low pass. A USAF F-35A demo near ground impact. A fatal ground impact of a Hellenic Air Force F-4E. And so many more. Accidents, close calls, pilot errors, and willful violations of regulations and safety protocols. Commanders, Air Bosses, and senior aviators are responsible for the safety of the aviators, their aircraft, and, above all, the innocent civilians who came to watch. What will it take to wake leadership up, to make them step in with clear guidance and enforce strict adherence to safety regulations?
In my lectures about air show discipline, I talk about lessons I learned over the years, some of them the hard way. During my first air show season in 1987, I came within fractions of a second of departing the CF-18 and crashing because I had knowingly violated the flight manual trying to make the Hornet look better to the crowd. I learned a life lesson that day.
I recently joined Cameron Sabet on his podcast, “Cutting to the Case” to talk about performing under pressure in high-risk environments: the preparation, mindset, and execution it takes to survive in the test pilot world — from my transition into the RCAF CF-18 through what it actually takes to test fly at the edge of an aircraft’s envelope. One theme was new territory for me — cognitive overload, and the discipline it takes to manage the extreme cognitive loads that make you both lethal and survivable in a 5th generation F-35. What surprised me is how directly that translates to modern medicine as well as the science of ‘Human Performance’.
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