Amazing flying machines

The picture shown in the letters page of October 10 regarding this year's Malta International Airshow is indeed ironic.

Complementing John Darmanin's letter on the subject was a photograph of an airshow plane preparing to land. The aircraft itself is a slow, lumbering transport aircraft that is surely not noisy at all, in fact much less than any of Air Malta's planes that regularly fly in our skies.

Airshows are about aviation and in aviation one finds all sorts of aircraft, slow, fast, quiet, noisy, propeller-driven, jet-driven, engine-less gliders, powered gliders, the list is endless. Most of these different kinds of aircraft were at the show and the "unbearable aircraft noise" as described by Mr Darmanin was caused by only a fraction of all the aircraft at the show.

Considering that this year there was not even an aerobatic team at the show makes one wonder what the real scope is behind some of the criticism of this international event.

On a slightly more technical view, the cloudy skies during the airshow this year made the pilots fly the "flat" display which entails flying more horizontally than the otherwise vertical displays, which are possible in clear or scattered clouds weather.

A "flat" display necessitates flying below the clouds and thus the pilots spend more time at lower levels than they would have in a "full" display. The lower levels are dictated by safety regulations and thus a flat display is not flown at any lower heights than a "full" vertical display, the only difference between the two being that the former is flown more frequently at the lower levels.

Technicalities apart, the airshow this year was yet another great event enjoyed by thousands and I could not fail to observe the high number of tourists who were seemingly enjoying the show as much as their Maltese counterparts.

In Britain, airshows are the second largest spectator events after football and there has been no public fatality at any airshow in England for more than 30 years. The same cannot be said regarding football in the UK and yet in Malta one still finds people who call for banning this once-in-a-year event that is held during daylight hours, finishing by late afternoon.

Can we ever do anything Maltese without trying to shoot ourselves in the foot at each and every opportunity?