Club Arnage

The Red Arrows are out in the Med in Greece, working up for the forthcoming display season (standard practice with relatively uninterrupted good weather compared to UK).  Lunchtime today, one pilot unhurt with his aircraft safely landed minus the top of the tail, and the other in hospital having suffered a dislocated shoulder during ejection, with the aircraft in rather compressed bits on the  airfield.  Thankfully no other damage or injuries.  Judging by the names, it appears that the synchro pair may not have managed to quite miss each other.....

MG Mark

Glad they are both are OK.

Albeit expensive, but the aircraft are replaceable!

Are these guys Kiwi recruits?  The Red Checkers have a history of this sort of thing (sadly not always with such a positive outcome for the pilots).

Dx

Its always good to see the Red Arrows putting on their show, although they do have sensible margins for public safety, I guess in practice training they try and close the limits. Glad no real injuries, as for the cost, the amount they help raise for charities must have run in to the 10's or 100's of millions over the years.

Good to know they are both OK, the ac can be fixed or replaced.

Thanks for the sentiments folks - they are good and, along with BBMF, are one of the few things that we have that keeps the RAF in the public eye, albeit normally for different reasons (and no, although we have many in light blue, I don't think either of them are of Kiwi extraction... ;).  First displays are scheduled for the back end of May in Cyprus at the end of their work up and then Southend.  So there is time in hand, and I imagine that with about 12 or 13 Hawks on the Reds inventory, a couple in depth maintenance may just have a bit of extra engineering effort applied to them now, although if not, there is always the option of repainting a couple of the Valley Hawks....the tricky bit will be whether the ejectee (the synchro pair lead) will recover well enough and quickly enough, or whether they draw someone back into the fold, or run an 8-ship for a while. We shall see and, hopefully, it will be a 9-ship at Southend.

a tough time for the Team to get over it and around it, but humour has already started coming through - as has been posted elsewhere, 2 F3 drivers flying together, no navigators, and no ATC or GCI...it was never going to end well...  And a reminder of the Reds accident at Akrotiri in 1984, when one of the synchro pair scraped down the runway, luckiest chap around pulled out of the aircraft disintegrating around him by his parachute; one of the Chinook squadrons were out there at the time doing the Beirut evacuation and held up scorecards with "0" on them as the rest of the Reds landed and taxiied back in...  

Good to see you on line mate!  Hope it's not too hot ;D

MG Mark

A new recruit for the caterpillar club. Glad to hear pilots are OK.
 Canada Phil

Hotter than Le Mans in June in every sense  >:D.

Then we'll hope to see you at La Sarther in June to chill then  ;D

MG Mark