AERIAL PAGEANTS

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 184, 2 May 1929, Page 11

AERIAL PAGEANTS

SAFETY OF SPECTATORS LESSON OF HAWKE’S BAY A tightening of the regulations in regard to the approval of aero clubs was foreshadowed by the Minister of Defence (Hon. T. M. Wilford) in an interview with a “Dominion” representative yesterday on his return from Hawke’s Bay, where he was the principal guest at the air pageant at Hastings. “After the lesson of the Hawke s Bay aero pageant, the safety of the spectators must be a sine qua non,” said the Minister. “It turned out at the pageant that the spectators were more in danger during the day than were the flying men. It seems impossible to get the ordinary individual to realise that you cannot pull up an areoplane in the same, manner as a motor-car. There are no brakes on an aeroplane, which, after it lands, runs as far as its momentum will carry it. “My heart was in my mouth a dozen times' on Saturday last, when I saw ’planes alighting and people in their hundreds at a time running forward to the approaching machines. There seemed to be no realisation that if the ’plane had not stopped it would have run through the mass and cut to pieces those in the oad. A pilot has no control in stopping an aeroplane after it has struck- rhe ground, and the distance it will run depends upon the speed at which it hits the ground. When I was flying in Auckland in a Bristol fighter and landed at 40 miles an hour, it took nearly 400 yards for the machine to stop.' If a Bristol had landed bn that course on Saturday at 40 miles an hour and run 400 yards it would have carved its way with its propeller through a inass of people.”