Yesterday was Presidential Inauguration Day in South Africa, which was the biggest event of its kind in the country in the past two plus decades. Of course that isn’t the focus of this post, though — rather it’s to highlight the indescribably mesmerizing formation flying that two South African Airways A340-600s did to commemorate the event.
Here’s a video of the planes flying over the Loftus Versfeld Stadium in Pretoria:
SAA Airbus and Air Force's Silver Falcons Aerobatics Display team pic.twitter.com/TtWLmeZApY
— SABC News (@SABCNews) May 25, 2019
That’s some incredible airmanship over the stadium. As an aviation geek what I find even more impressive is how the planes maneuvered around Johannesburg Airport. I’ve always thought of the A340-600 as being a rather stiff and “sensitive” plane, though maybe my impression is wrong, based on how they’re flying these.
Seriously, check out these two videos:
#SAInauguration19 #Inauguration2019 #AfricaDay2019 VIEWS!!! pic.twitter.com/PvBfyYe9T3
— Ntloko (@fana_lemane) May 25, 2019
Here’s the official video South African Airways put together about the event:
Watch #SAInauguration19 from the eyes of our pilots as they flew over Loftus today. Your #LookUpSAA moment may be featured as well. #FlySAA pic.twitter.com/rMAjr7gSoP
— SAA – South Africa (@flysaa) May 25, 2019
And here’s South African Airways highlighting the pilots who operated these flights:
Many are wondering who the crews were that did the flypast at #SAInauguration19 today, well here they are: Hennie Badenhorst, Monde Gxoyiya, Andre Steenkamp, Vusi Khumalo, Mark Dethian, Julian Whitelaw and Pierre Gouws. #LookUpSAA #SAInauguration19 #FlySAA pic.twitter.com/KibmAe7rBE
— SAA – South Africa (@flysaa) May 25, 2019
Amazing, or what?
SAA : we have lost billions of dollars operating our planes. What should we do?
* Performs a fly past anyway.
Almost as good as the Rugby WC 1995 flyover
Wow. Seriously impressive.
Even more amazing if they hadn't spent loads of money they don't have on that.
The A346 has always been an incredible aircraft to fly on. I will always remember how smooth the flights were. The SAA pilots have done a fantastic job for this fly past and deserve every bit of the kudos they are getting the world over with these videos.
@Bagoly that wasn’t on takeoff, they did a flyby of the airport as well. By the way the lead aircraft must’ve had a serious case of ‘bank angle aural warnings’ when it flew that left break out of the airport flyby...
Still waiting to see another barell roll. Maybe Boeing needs to do that on a 737MAX to 'sell airplanes' once again.
This one even more crazy/incredible/amazing:
https://twitter.com/AeroSkippah/status/1132341904220278785
They look awfully close for take-off - are there two parallel runways?
Caution wake turbulence
@Sean M.
Where have you been?! Yours is pretty much the only name I look for when scrolling down the comments section!
Here’s to hoping you’re back with your typically invaluable insights!
This is nice and reminds me of the four BA Concordes flying formation on Christmas Eve some 34 years ago. Great!
Even more impressive is the second aircraft that somehow managed to stay out of the massive wake turbulence of the first.
FYI, one of the pilots used to be a fairly prolific contributor to Airliners.net back in the day.
Very impressive.