AIRSHOW DISPLAYS AND FORMATIONS WITH THE 747-400

AN ESSENTIAL PART of displaying airliners is keeping the huge aircraft in front of the crowd. Flying an airshow in an airliner at its usual high speeds uses up much airspace and the crowd may lose interest if the aircraft disappears out of sight for too long.

The higher the speed of the aircraft, the greater its radius of turn. The 747-400 was therefore displayed at airshows with 20 degrees of flap which made a relatively sedate 160 knots easily manageable – with still a good margin of safety over the stall speed.

Captain Flippie Vermeulen displayed an SAA 747-400 at the Yeovilton Air show with Scully Levin. Flippie describes how Scully is very focussed on providing the crowd with the best views of the aircraft. For this reason, the ideal viewing angle is considered to be a 125 degree arc in front of the crowd line. To remain within this arc it is always tempting to use tight turns, but that increases the G loading and airliners are very restricted in the amount of G-forces they may be subjected to, being 2.5-G in level flight with flaps up. With flaps deployed, the G-limit is even lower.

Flippie Vermeulen explains that the bank angle at airshows is therefore limited to 45° and if necessary, the wing is unloaded by reducing back pressure of the stick. Yet the radius of turn is still tight enough for the constrained airshow environment and there is enough bank angle to provide for a really impressive presentation of the massive aircraft.

The 747 air show display ended with a low pass and then a full power spiral climb away. At a low aircraft weight this produceda spectacular vertical speed of around 5000 fpm. In less than a minute they had to dramatically throttle back to avoid exceeding the 4000 foot airspace bottom limit.

Formation Fly-pasts

Flippie Vermeulen also displayed the 747 in formation flights for a number of presidential inaugurations and fly-pasts. He describes how the procedure was to line up the pilots’ eye line with the two rear most points of the lead aircraft’s horizontal stabiliser. Then they would gradually move sideways until the two black rings painted on the two nearest engine nacelles lined up. They would then hold that position,

which was challenging with identical aircraft in the formation – but with the mixed formation with the Airbus A340-600 in the lead and two 747- 400s on the wing, the lower drag of the Airbus with Flaps 2 made it very much more tricky to maintain position accurately.

Displaying the 747-400 In the UK

The 747-was only flown once at an airshow in South Africa but it caught the attention of British airshow organisers. SAA’s famous Springbok service used two SAA 747-400s daily on the London service and these aircraft sat on the ground at Heathrow during the day, so SAA was happy to arrange 747-400 displays for the British airshow organisers.

In just one year the 747-400 was displayed at Duxford’s Warbird Show, Goodwood, Farnborough and the Royal Navy Air Station at Yeovilton. Thousands of spectators were able to see the incredible spectacle of a 747 low and slow and the videos of the displays have been download countless times. These displays are still talked about with awe.

Two 747s on the wing of an Airbus A340-600 for the presidential inauguration flypast in April 2004. Pic - Hannes Meyer.