Guess what? Another Avalon Thread

This is a friggen disgrace IMO. 2 raptors, 3-5 tankers each way to ferry them, a C-17 full of spares/support/etc and USAF/Avalon cant be arsed to fly the pilot out? Stupid and insulting.

Didnt display on the trade days either.

 

The aircraft is new, not that many pilots will be display-qualified yet. There's a difference between "can't be arsed to send" and "not available to send". I'm sure it's disappointing, but look at it this way - they could've said "hmm, no display pilots available, not much point sending the damn things at all I guess".

 

No worries, I probably took it that way due to the bruised ego of not realising it was a model.

I agree the bikes and monster trucks shouldn't really be there, certainly not at the expense of other plane related people. I have to say that, where as we stayed till the very end of the Williamtown show, we ended up leaving at about 3pm on the Sunday, not least of all because we had a very long drive ahead of us - had originally attempted to attend on the Sat, but our 2yo son threw up twice just after we turned onto the side road to go to the airshow. If anyone saw a blue mazda 6 pulled over on the way in, or with the police escort back out - that was us - poor little guy had picked up a stomach bug from a friend a few days earlier which had a 48hr incubation period.

 

New?? It's been in operational service for over 5 years now and been flying for 14. Plenty of time to train a pilot for display runs. It's been listed on the website as coming for months and the dates are fairly fixed for Avalon. Given the variety of other aircraft there flying (c27 was the only new one) the F22 flying, even doing long flat loud passes (b1 style) would have turned a medioce show into something good.

Flying them out for a static display just seems a massive waste of resources.

 

The C-27 was at Avalon four years ago IIRC.

I'd still consider the F-22 to be a new aircraft - the next most recent all new US design (of similar type) is the original Hornet (AFAIK), which is getting on for 30 years in service. The F-22 hasn't been in service during a peacetime period yet, so personnel may be in heavy demand. There are less than 200 aircraft, so I can imagine maybe 20 active display-qualified pilots in the world, and perhaps none of them want to fly forever to a place in the middle of nowhere just to impress us when they're on holidays from getting shot at etc?