One of the Red Arrows display team has crashed during a display at Bournemouth Air Show this afternoon. The other eight planes landed safely.

Apparently, it was after the display. The pilot appears to have ejected into a river South of Bournemouth airport

No other details at present

Becoming clearer....Sounds like 9 left after the airshow and only 8 landed at base...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-14602900

Judging by the footage , it looks like the pilot pancaked coming out of a display turn, he went down very fast, no sign of an ejection.

Based on the lack of information forthcoming it doesn't look good.

Local news is saying pilot has died

The pilot was killed. Story here.

Confirmed by Police news conference. Sad day for Red Arrows
http://www.raf.mod.uk/reds/behindthescenes/red4.cfm

There were also two at the Shoreham Airshow ...
As you say , a rare event and sad news

I also saw them at Eastbourne last week. They fley back in formation right over my house.

RIP Flt. Lt. Jon Egging, Red 4

I have that same feeling of loss when Concorde went down... A flagship loss.

Not that I'm not sympathetic of course....but why is the Twittersphere and internet so caught up in the RIPs for this guy.....why is it more emotion grabbing that one of our planes going down in a war zone when the pilot is fighting?

Just curious as to the driver of the emotion, that's all

I'd hazard a guess that it's because Ornery Folk can relate to the Arrows, they've seen them do displays, they've taken their kids to see them and they're a part of "normal" life.

Whereas, Ornery Folk "sort of" know what combat pilots do, but there's little or no intersection between the two sets of lives - all the Arrows pilots are also combat pilots, so this is as close as it comes for most folk.

That's my 5rap, anyway...


Anyhoozer, here's a photo I managed to grab of them last month after they flew at the Tall Ships Regatta in Greenock last month. They had finished the display and were heading south to who-knows-where, I was sort of expecting them to pass our house so was there with camera poised, but they were going so low and so fast (about 200 feet asl and easily 450 knots) that this was the only one I had time to get

Attachment 31300

Tragic loss for the Reds. If you look at phase of flight when Red 4 crashed, it points to a technical problem. When the actual aerobatic section of the program is over following the final break, each Hawk peels off for a sequenced landing in the airfield circuit. Jon Egging put out a brief Mayday call according to a scanner monitor.

The aviation world is a small community. Heartfelt sympathies to his wife who put out a very brave statement Saturday night.

I am sure that is exactly it. Facebook tribute pages have already been joined by well over 100,000 people. As the Red Arrows perform over 100 displays a year, there can be very few people who haven't seen them at some time.

On the same lines, whilst this story was top of the news headlines, there was just a minor mention of "12 people died in a plane crash in Canada today"

Sad to hear that the pilot died ! Bad for the Red Arrows of course is that they will be grounded until everything is investigated and the reasons found out.

An aerobatics pilot is doing something beautiful people enjoy, a fighter pilot in war action is not.

has anyone heard about the threat of the Red Arrows being disbanded?

I'm not sure if it is a hoax?

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=123296141051503

So one Welsh MP say's the RA should be disbanded and the money spent elsewhere and 2 sisters start a FB group to fight this "threat".

Not a hoax and not even a threat.

The MP asked this prior to the accident.

BBC News

The figure quoted for the cost to the British taxpayer is £8.8 million a year. This seems a small sum to me. That is somewhere around £80,000 per display. The income generated locally from the displays must easily outweigh this.

They also perform a great marketing role for the RAF and Britain.

No doubt, following the accident, there will be some calls for their role to be reviewed.

That's cheap for National Pride and prestige. A bargain.