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Come fly with me

Come fly with me!
by Graham Smith

Freelance journalist Graham Smith, Managing Editor of Mediaworld PR Ltd, spends a day with the Red Arrows aerobatics team.


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You would not want to fly with Andrew Offer after your lunch unless you wanted to enjoy it twice.

Squadron Leader Andy Offer is the certified barmpot who flies at the head of the formation of The Red Arrows, the RAF aerobatic display team, which does things with aeroplanes guaranteed to induce thrombosis, loosen your dentures, pin your ears somewhere round the back of your head and perforate your eardrums…and that’s only if you’re watching.

My first sight of the formidable nine formation of Hawk jets was through a car window on a sunny Lincolnshire morning. They were lazing along at a few hundred miles an hour, nose to tail, bobbing and weaving like a drone of bees. Grazing sheep didn’t bat an eyelid but when two of the formation broke off, somersaulted, revved up and began swooping low a normally ruminant cow looked as though it had just had a swift attack of wind and colic.

Sometimes they fly only slightly higher than the blades on a hover mower but use marginally more petrol.

Red wings gleaming in the morning sun, they are a familiar sight to the locals around RAF Scampton where they are based before jetting off on this year’s hectic round the world schedule which at the moment has 98 venues. If they flew at the same speed between appearances that should take them slightly more than a fortnight.

Arriving at Scampton I was met by a pleasant young chap from RAF Cranwell with three and a half inches of titanium in his spine. I enquired if that was due to ejecting from an aircraft and informed that it was not, he had been doing sit ups. I was about to remark that it seemed a dangerous thing to do in an aircraft when he elaborated that he had been on the ground at the time when something went in his back.

He was doing the guided tour bit for visitors until his back healed. You tend to ask daft questions when you are not familiar with aircraft which travel fast enough to make Andrews Liver Salts totally unnecessary. Would is be possible to take a flight with the Arrows?

“Certainly if you don’t mind blacking out for 30 seconds, wearing a neck brace for a while and walking stiff legged for a fortnight,” came the reply.

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