Airshow safety is front of mind again after a season of accidents and close calls. Whenever it is, I turn to an old friend, the late Major General Des Barker, SAAF (Ret’d), and his seminal research into display accidents. His book, “Zero Error Margin”, is the encyclopedic history of airshow and performance accidents, and his essays in aviation journals and his contributions to the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, International Council of Airshows and European Airshow Council remain essential reading.
Des was careful with his words. He refused to call it “pilot error.” He called it “error of judgement.” In the 2018 SETP Cockpit magazine, he wrote:
“The term error has connotations of negligence or incompetence, which is clearly not the case in these accidents. Display pilots do not intentionally have accidents but make their decisions based on the prevailing environmental factors, energy states and attitude of the aircraft in terms of a particular manoeuvre – sadly though, as humans, our ability to continually make consistently accurate decisions within the hazardous low-level display arena, remains questionable.”
In that same 2018 piece, Des counted 28 display accidents and incidents over the previous decade, with an average of 13 display pilots killed per year. We don’t need more regulations or restrictions; they exist today. Now eight years on, we need to drill down again into the human judgement at the heart of this unforgiving, low-level environment.
Des himself died in an aircraft accident in 2021. He would be disappointed, but not at all surprised, that we are still seeing so many airshow accidents.
Will we ever learn?
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