Air shows keep flying despite deadly accidents
Hundreds of thousands of spectators are expected to attend the annual Atlantic City Airshow in New Jersey Wednesday, but it comes during a summer that has witnessed a series of tragic incidents involving pilots and spectators, reports CBS News correspondent Vladimir Duthiers.
A harrowing scene took place at an air show in Austria Sunday when a pilot lost control and crashed near a crowd of 500 spectators. That pilot died but no one else was injured.
Friday, a pilot practicing for the New York Air Show crashed and died near a runway.
In England, a week earlier, a vintage plane went down on a road during an air show in Shoreham, killing 11 people.
Also in August, spectators at the Chicago Air and Water Show watched in horror as an Army parachutist with the Golden Knights was involved in a mid-air collision. He struck a building and later died.
"Every aspect of entertainment is going to have an element of risk. With the air show community and working with the FAA and DoD, we have mitigated a lot of that risk in our industry," Atlantic City Airshow organizer David Schultz said.
Last year's show drew 700,000 spectators. Schultz said fan safety is the most important part of every event.
"There are stringent rules here, both in Canada and in the United States, with regards to show lines as well as to areas where they can fly and energy directed towards crowd, that the European standards are not near as strict as what we have here in the United States," he said.
U.S. air show accidents are rare but do occur. Eleven people were killed at the 2011 Reno Airshow when a vintage plane crashed into a field of spectators.
Unlike civilian stunt pilots, the US. Navy Blue Angels and the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds perform military demonstrations.
After a pilot died at a South Carolina air show in 2007, the Blue Angels implemented new safety measures.
"We do what's called like a 'crawl, walk, run' mentality where we start out with very basic levels and it progresses and progresses until eventually you've got a flight demonstration in the form of an air show that you can deliver as a safe, homologous product all over the country. It's all going to be relatively similar," Cpt. Jeff Kuss said.
Among the civilian stunt pilots who had been scheduled to perform in Atlantic city was the man who died Friday at the New York Air Show.