I liked watching it too, but I also didn't like watching it, if that makes any sense. I've also flown to Cat III minimums with a couple hundred folks in back but it is always in a very, very controlled environment. This -135R wasn't over a runway, in fact he was damn close to ingesting some serious dust bunnies. This was obviously simply a guy hot dogging - they weren't 50 feet over the runway at 1.3Vs configured and stabilized either if you know what I mean. Now if he's in a tactical fighter with a bang seat and he's not pointing his jet at a crowd, then go wild. If he get's caught or screws up he doesn't take anyone else with him - he just dies or gets a courtmarshall and wastes his countries resources. Like any country can afford such a loss. It's pretty selfish and immature for someone with that sort of responsibility unless there is low level training going on (valid training is good, showing off not always good - the most dangerous phrase used in an airplane is, "Watch this!"). An airshow is an airshow - it's recruitment and it's an accepted, controlled risk.

Typically, when things like this happen the guys usually end up banging in for a demotion when their tricks finally get out of control or they kill someone. I'm on the road right now so I can't post the video of the B-52 crash that unfortunately killed a lot of Daddy's in front of their families at Mountain home Air Base in Boise, ID. It was a tragedy, because everybody was trying to stop the "Safety Director" pilot from killing somebody with all his hot dogging - but he ended up taking everyone with him on his last scheduled flight before retirement.

Maybe we should get this pilot into RC jets instead!!