Before taking flyers, let’s get grounded on Airlink stadium flyover debate
· Citizen
There were two questions last week leading up to Saturday’s Greatest Rivalry Rugby Test at FNB Stadium. How close will the Airlink flyover be this time and how close would the result be?
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By Wednesday, we knew we didn’t have to worry about the first one, as Airlink took the high road and withdrew its application for permission for the FNB stadium flyover pending the South African Civil Aviation Authority adjudication of the previous week’s flyover in Cape Town, that virtually overshadowed the Boks’ stunning win.
It will be interesting to consider how a regulator, which allowed the Cape Town flyover to happen, then announces it is going to check it retrospectively.
Then again, we live in a country where the ANC sees no irony in marching against the power utility it controls for load shedding, or, indeed, to the Union Buildings to protest joblessness.
It’s notable, too, how Airlink stayed ahead of the whole controversy, voluntarily surrendering its logbooks and black box recordings before announcing on Wednesday it wouldn’t do the FNB stadium flyover.
The excuse about the weather raised eyebrows, but overall, it was a good strategy to play the good and responsible corporate citizen angle, while making headlines all over the world for what has universally been acclaimed as an incredible piece of airmanship.
Social media has had a field day over the stadium stunt.
The author, Umberto Eco, famously moaned social media gave legions of idiots the right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner, when they should have stuck to sharing their opinions at the bar.
He isn’t wrong. We’ve segued seamlessly from epidemiologists during Covid to military strategists after Russian invasion of Ukraine, to meteorologists and last week, aviation experts.
South African’s took it a step further as scrum experts, too, before the third Test had began.
There’s been some great wit in among the trolls and it’s been wonderful to see South Africans of all hues and persuasions rally against the perceived slights from overseas about the flyover but as always with social media, there is no middle ground.
Is it not possible that two opposing concepts can be true at once: that the two-aircraft flyover was daring and exceptionally executed – and reckless, at least for the more than 56 000 people sitting in the Cape Town stadium?
It’s an important question – and one that needs to be resolved before the next flyover.