The South African airline Airlink is defending its dramatic flyover of two full sized passenger jets that passed just yards above a packed stadium in Cape Town.
Footage of the ambitious stunt consumed social media, with multiple angles showing how closely the aircraft — two Embraer SA passenger jets — passed within the rooftop of the 55,000 capacity venue. It was a tight enough call that many saw it as a near-crash rather than a piece of precision maneuvering.
In response to the backlash, Airlink, which is backed by Qatar Airways, is reassuring that the flyover was super carefully planned and as safe as it could be.
“Airlink notes the concerns,” its statement began, in near perfect parody of corporate non-apologies.
“The two aircraft were flown by highly-experienced crew, with each comprised of three senior captains operating in the roles of commander, co-pilot and safety/technical officer,” it added, per multiple reports.
It insisted that the stunt “demanded careful planning and rehearsal” because of the low altitude and speed, stressing that it was approved by the South African Civil Aviation Authority and the Air Traffic Navigation Services.
Be that as it may, aviation experts were aghast at what they saw. The flight tracking platform Flightradar24 calculated that one of the planes flew within less than 50 feet of the stadium’s rooftop, where a rugby match between South Africa and New Zealand was being hosted. One of the planes also appeared to be flying much lower than the other, which could cut against the airline’s claims of how tightly controlled the stunt was.
“Hundreds of professional aviators around the world have looked at those images and expressed concern,” wrote Scott Bateman, a professional aviator and author, on X. He added that while the stunt may have been carefully planned, a “mature safety culture” should still be capable of admitting that “perhaps the margins were tighter than they needed to be.”
Keith Tonkin, an Australian aviation consultant, said that the Embraer SA passenger jets weren’t designed to fly that low.
“The bigger picture is that a benchmark has been established and others may expect to do something similar, and that’s not going to end well,” Tonkin told The Associated Press. Unexpected turbulence or a bird strike, he warned, could’ve been disastrous.
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