UAE: Spectators on a high at Al Ain air show
Al Ain, Jan 28: Explosions, a flying lawnmower, and girls dangling from airplanes were just a few shockers at the Al Ain Aerobatic Show 2008.
Tens of stunt planes – from the world’s oldest aerobatic aircraft to the most agile pair of wings today – thundered over the otherwise sleepy city, spewing out multicoloured smoke over the airstrip there.
Thousands of spectators gasped as team pilots crossed each other within a few feet at combined speeds upwards of 920 kilometres per hour. Onlookers tensed up equally as hard when planes shut off their engines at the peak of a 1,000-metre, perfectly vertical shot to the heavens and then floated motionless in the blue sky – if only for a second – before freefalling to within metres of the ground and then pulling the nose up in the nick of time.
Although ear-splitting and ridiculously fast, supersonic jets were not the only jaw-droppers at the Show, which ends on Sunday.
A falcon trained by UAE handlers received a standing ovation when it snatched a make-believe prey – attached to a noisy, remote-controlled miniature plane – after chasing it relentlessly at high speeds, manoeuvring angles more twisted than spaghetti.
Another unusual display was a Red Bull helicopter that thought it was an aerobatic plane. The blue and red BO-105 make chopper successfully pulled most tricks typical of a stunt aircraft – loops, back-flips, freefalls, nosedives, stalls, and spins.
The feat was followed by a pair of young girls strapped to the top of their Boeing Stearman propeller-planes. Team Guinot, the only formation wing-walking outfit in the world, featured the duo untie themselves from the relative security of their rigs and climb down to the cockpit.
Earlier in the day, Zoltan Veres, a 45-year-old Hungarian pilot who set a Guinness World Record for the most consecutive rolls – he turned his Extra 300 plane 408 times in last year’s Show – flabbergasted the audience with his inverted ribbon cut.
The daredevil snapped a ribbon, held in place only 10 feet high, with the tail of his aircraft while flying upside-down in excess of 150 kilometres an hour.
But perhaps the most gripping event of the day was TinStix of Dynamite, a combination of explosions and flybys.
The fiery blasts sent shockwaves of warm air into the crowds, already hyped up from the accompanying heavy-metal music. Thick black smoke swirled into the air as parents covered their children’s ears – and eyes in some cases.
The pyromania sent eardrums into overdrive, adding to the warlike atmosphere. Even the two planes involved, a silver SU-31 and a black Pitts, looked menacingly similar to World War One fighters.
The commentator, Gordon Jones, squeezed in this remark between the bangs: “Creating mayhem in the desert … turning up the heat.”
Visitors were not the only ones that walked away thrilled at the Show’s end. The Dh367, 000 prize-money for solo flight went to Spain’s Ramon Alonso for his top scores in innovation and entertainment criteria.
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