Brendan Schulman

I posted yesterday about the Airlink flypast in Cape Town and like many professional pilots, I was aghast. The reaction to this flypast has been fascinating. For some, it was spectacular. A moment of national pride, flown by experienced South African aviators and apparently carefully planned, rehearsed and approved. I understand that. But here’s why so many professional aviators are uncomfortable with what we saw. Aviation is extraordinarily safe precisely because we question ourselves. We debrief. We challenge. We report. We investigate. And sometimes, even when something was legal, authorised and went exactly as planned, we still ask… Was that really a good idea? That isn’t negativity. It isn’t disrespect. And it certainly isn’t an attack on South African aviation. It’s mature safety culture. The lead aircraft reportedly cleared the stadium roof by around 40–50 feet. Hundreds of professional aviators around the world have looked at those images and expressed concern. That deserves more than “nothing to see here”. Perhaps the eventual conclusion will be that everything was conducted entirely within the approved parameters. But a mature safety culture should still be capable of saying: we planned it, we approved it, we flew it, and with hindsight, perhaps the margins were tighter than they needed to be. Because aviation didn’t become one of the safest forms of transport by defending everything that worked. It became safe by relentlessly examining the things that nearly didn’t. And this is wholeheartedly one of those times. Every time pilots challenge something, file a report, admit an error or question an accepted practice, somebody flying tomorrow is a little safer because of it. That’s why professional aviators can sometimes sound overly cautious. The flypast fun police!! We’re not trying to take the spectacle out of aviation. Quite the opposite in fact. We’re trying to make sure everyone gets to enjoy it again tomorrow.