LONDON (AP) — British police say the death toll from an airshow crash is “highly likely” to increase to 11 people after a fighter jet slammed into a busy main road.
The Hawker Hunter single-seater fighter jet, which was participating in the Shoreham Airshow near Brighton in southern England, hit several vehicles on a nearby road as it crashed Saturday afternoon. Witnesses say the jet appeared to have plummeted when it failed to pull out of a loop maneuver.
The initial death toll was seven.
Assistant Chief Constable Steve Barry of Sussex Police said officials were removing bodies from the scene Sunday and more fatalities may be discovered.
The pilot remained in critical condition in the hospital, and a crane will remove the jet wreckage on Monday.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
We just had a death in the famed Chicago Air & Water Show as well (parachutist crashed into a building). It may be time for the practices of these shows to be re-evaluated: Should airshows be occurring near high-rise buildings and crowded roadways?
I always hated the air show when I lived in West Town. The noise, the wanton burning of fossil fuels, the tax dollars spent in advertising the Military Industrial Complex. And anytime you have air shows, you have large crowds and risking flying, a prescription for disaster. Maybe it’s time to just stop having them?
I am with you, but was trying to temper my comments . . . just too many negative issues associated with these events.
It is nice to see that some other country besides the United States allows witless wonders in their aviation supervision bureau to make policies that allow people who really have no business flying an extremely unforgiving aircraft doing aerobatics in the proximity to innocent persons. If the general public understood the laxity of the United States’ aviation supervision system, the demand would go out in overwhelming numbers to stop all airshows. All people have to do is look at how much the unlimited resources Thunderbirds and the Blue Angels military precision flying teams practice over uninhabited areas and still have accidents vs. how little these limited resources yahoos practice to get a clue as to what is going on in the skies above them.
…bet we’re still #1 in airshow deaths…