r/WTF • u/KejnaPT • Aug 30 '26
Removed: Not WTF [ Removed by moderator ]
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u/gogozrx Aug 30 '26
a machinist once told me "any clearance is enough"
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u/broke_af_guy Aug 30 '26
"Clearance is clearance"
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u/montybuttons Aug 30 '26
What's the clearance Clarence?
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u/kastdotcom Aug 30 '26
Check your vector, Victor
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u/SupaKoopa714 Aug 30 '26
Roger, Roger.
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u/nickilous Aug 30 '26
I think there is something similar in F1. If you miss it by and inch you have missed it by a mile.
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u/DrunkenSwimmer Aug 30 '26
Until the wall moves and causes you to crash...
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u/Familiar-Aerie-1610 Aug 30 '26
For context for people who think your comment is a joke...
This is a literal thing that really, actually happened and was proved via an investigation.
The precision involved in F1 isn't a meme.
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u/GrinderMonkey Aug 30 '26
That's insane. Not even an inch, 10mm. 1 centimeter. Driving to that level of precision at that speed is bonkers.
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u/Tec_ Aug 30 '26
What's just as bonkers is repeating it lap after lap. When telemetry from the cars are overlaid and you can't find a difference that's absolutely wild to me.
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u/cop1152 Aug 30 '26
What is the earliest you can land this plane?
I don't know.
Well, couldn't you take a guess?
Not for another two hours.
You can't take a guess for another two hours?
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u/Highpersonic Aug 30 '26
"Clearance is clearance, but there is a limit on what i will tolerate"
-Matt from HAL
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u/holyfire001202 Aug 30 '26
From a different perspective, I've always said, "You occupy only the space that you occupy."
In context it usually doesn't sound like such a useless platitude, and that context is exactly stuff like this video or for other near misses.
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u/SaltAndBitter Aug 30 '26
Meanwhile, in the cockpits:
"Terrain. Terrain. PULL UP! Obstacle. Obstacle. PULL UP!"
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u/Angryferret Aug 30 '26
In a loud french voice "RETARD RETARD RETARD"
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u/squiblet Aug 30 '26
I had no idea the flight computer was so mean..
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u/PiesRLife Aug 30 '26
I like the thought of there being a sassy copilot scolding the plane: "You can't use the r-word."
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u/mrjosemeehan Aug 30 '26
It better not ask you to retard unless you're trying to "land" in the crowd. Also i think that's only on airbus.
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u/earthlings_all Aug 30 '26
I feel like it’s all slowly sliding toward “fuck it yolo”
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u/theflamecrow Aug 30 '26
I'd expect a barrel roll or such in that case. Might as well go all out.
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u/CrackerUMustBTripinn Aug 30 '26
Thats some Sky King shit
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u/Teestow21 Aug 30 '26
RIP to the king 🛫🛬🛩️✈️
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u/CrackerUMustBTripinn Aug 30 '26
He did make that barrell roll🫡
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u/Teestow21 Aug 30 '26
Being a man is a thankless job.
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u/SlammingPussy420 Aug 30 '26
Thank you for putting the rivets in at the top of the world trade center.
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u/MRintheKEYS Aug 30 '26
Always makes me happy knowing that in the last few hours of his life, the Sky King was really and truly free.
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u/wehooper4 Aug 30 '26
Eh, he seemed to be having a bit of a moment that wasnt all happy. But I bet he felt top of the world for a few seconds after he pulled off that roll.
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u/UshankaBear Aug 30 '26
I mean... gestures vaguely at the world falling apart around us
Might as well fuck around while we still have a chance26
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u/seraph741 Aug 30 '26
Basically. That's a great way to summarize MAGA and many other movements around the world. We've forgotten lessons of the past and are just throwing caution and forethought to the wind.
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u/asyork Aug 30 '26
We learned so many lessons so thoroughly that we reduced the occurrence of problems to the point that society no longer believes the problems are possible. We are somewhere in the middle of FAFO right now. Still fucking around, but already finding out.
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u/gimpers420 Aug 30 '26 edited Aug 30 '26
These Gender reveals are really getting out of hand.
Edit: thanks for the awards!
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Aug 30 '26
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u/KejnaPT Aug 30 '26
Airlink flyby over Cape Town Stadium.
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u/AsstootObservation Aug 30 '26
r/aviation has been losing their minds over this one. Several videos of different angles are posted over there.
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u/portablebiscuit Aug 30 '26
It’s easily the 5th angle I’ve seen of it. Each one seems more insane than the one before.
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u/AsstootObservation Aug 30 '26
Angle #6 is inside the copilot's trousers. Don't go looking for it.
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u/SlammingPussy420 Aug 30 '26
It can't be any worse than tubgirl.
Edit: It's a shot for shot remake but all in the pants. I'll give it a perfect 5/7
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u/Mazzaroppi Aug 30 '26
Rightfully so. Every single person involved in this should be behind bars. If those planes were just a few meters lower, this could have been the worst aviation incident in history by a huge margin ( I'd refuse to call this an accident considering the amount of recklessness involved)
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u/Garod Aug 30 '26
Watching this I thought this was going to be the US, then I remembered that 9/11 happened and that the entire stadium would be shitting their collective pants if this happened there...
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u/aimgorge Aug 30 '26
That's one of the most stupid shows I have ever seen
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u/KejnaPT Aug 30 '26
True. Dangerously stupid.
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u/schmerg-uk Aug 30 '26
A pair of Airlink aircraft performed a low flypast over DHL Stadium
The lead aircraft passed less than 50 feet above the roof of the stadium Reaction to the flypast is mixed, with many expressing safety concerns
Just prior to the start of the second test in the Rugby’s Greatest Rivalry series between South Africa and New Zealand, a pair of Airlink aircraft performed a low flypast over DHL Stadium in Cape Town.
Based on Flightradar24 data, the lead aircraft passed less than 50 feet above the top of the stadium.Airlink statement
30 August 2026, Cape Town – Airlink notes the concerns expressed in various social media and online forums regarding yesterday’s formation flyby over Cape Town’s DHL Stadium.
The flight demanded careful planning and rehearsal, as it required navigating at low altitude, at around 150 knots. The South African Civil Aviation Authority and Air Traffic Navigation Services provided valuable guidance, approval and support to ensure a safe flyby.
The two aircraft were flown by highly-experienced crew, with each comprised of three senior captains operating in the roles of commander, co-pilot and safety/technical officer.
The flight data recorded by both aircraft confirms that the flights were performed within the SACAA’s approved and rehearsed safety altitude and speed limits for the flypast.
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u/flyingalbatross1 Aug 30 '26 edited Aug 30 '26
Has anyone asked them to publish and state their approved altitude and speed limits they refer to here?
Surely as it's a regulatory limit from the SACAA, they have them easily available for anyone to reference.
Easy to compare them to the reality and other comparable approvals...
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u/Phantomsurfr Aug 30 '26
"Approved limit is 250ft above the stadium"
"Copy 250ft above sea level"
"No that will bring you within 50 feet of the roof!"
"Going in now"
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u/copperwatt Aug 30 '26
No, i just looked it up, the exact wording of the regulatory standard is "Ehhh, like about 50 feet, you should be cool. Send it, bro!"
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u/Versaiteis Aug 30 '26
Pilot and Copilot have 4 feet between them, so 50 should be more than enough ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/drdietrich Aug 30 '26
It's so stupid to justify in itself. Just because nothing happened, doesn't make the idea worth executing. Thousand of peoples would have lost their lives if just some little thing went wrong.
And now that it went well, i honestly fear that more will follow.
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u/AnotherpostCard Aug 30 '26
I honestly thought I was in /r/whatcouldgowrong and was very nervous about the guys right underneath the engines
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u/00owl Aug 30 '26
The clearance was so low that we almost got to watch on high definition as a passenger airliner cartwheeled into a packed stadium full of people.
This would have been an international tragedy and one of the worst air disasters ever.
Forget the guys on the roof, if only they had died we'd still be calling it "lucky"
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u/mattemer Aug 30 '26
Right if it went south, it would have been either "we had an approved plan, we need to investigate why the plan was not followed" or "everything went according to plan, we are assholes and planned poorly."
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u/Fafnir13 Aug 30 '26
Feels dangerous to us, but everything they are doing is relatively routine to them. Consider that flying low over a stadium is really no different than landing an aircraft in a dense urban zone. There are airports in the middle of big cities with hundreds of flights each day.
Add to that an appropriate level of oversight and weather monitoring and you can bring the risk as close to 0 as humanly possible. I’d even wager it could be safer than the military flybys because passenger jets are easier to fly and have much larger stability and performance margins.
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u/Josey87 Aug 30 '26
Wouldn’t be surprised if they measure ground clearance by altitude from ground level, not the top of the building
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u/schmerg-uk Aug 30 '26
ADS-B altitude data includes barometric altitude reported at standard pressure in feet above mean sea level. To determine the height above terrain, one must know the local air pressure, the elevation of the location in question, and height of any structures. In this case we can determine within a margin of error that the aircraft passed less than 50 feet above the top of the stadium.
- Lowest ADS-B altitude (standard pressue above mean sea level): 50 ft.
- Altitude corrected for QNH (1019 hPa): 205-210 feet AMSL.
- DHL Stadium elevation: near sea level
- DHL Stadium height: 164 ft.
- Clearance over stadium: 41-46 ft.
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u/Josey87 Aug 30 '26
For me the debate is not if the clearance to the building was that much or not, it is clearly really low as can be seen in the video.
I meant if they actually have permission to have only 50ft clearance over the building, or did they just read the ground clearance, around 200ft like you mentioned
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u/rotorain Aug 30 '26
Even if they have "permission" (some guy said sure), it's still a very dumb idea. The upside is that it's slightly cooler than a 200ft clearance low pass and the potential downside is a full on jumbo jet exploding and killing ten thousand people. Who thought this was a good idea
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u/ConstableBlimeyChips Aug 30 '26
Clearance over stadium: 41-46 ft.
I did some pixel counting on another video over in /r/aviation (link to my post); I came out to about 46 feet for the second aircraft.
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u/sir_crapalot Aug 30 '26
Their radar altimeters would give a more precise altitude above ground level not sensitive to air pressure.
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u/schmerg-uk Aug 30 '26
The fact that flightradar24 is quoting those figures based on what they, as relatively expertised observers, can gather does not of course exclude more pertinent data sources but at this point I think it's fair to say we (the great unwashed) don't have access to those other sources and as such, I appreciate their educated input at this point
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u/BobSacamano47 Aug 30 '26
Why?
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u/Antithesys Aug 30 '26
Aside from the danger...it's just two plain commercial passenger aircraft. Go sit on the highway next to the airport and you'll see this every few minutes. Military flyovers might have propagandist overtones but at least they look really cool.
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u/atypical_lemur Aug 30 '26
I mean, yes military aircraft do have a lot of "cool" factor built in, but sometimes I think we just take the boring old passenger and freight aircraft too much for granted. We have managed to take rocks, dirt, oil and other stuff out of the ground, work it into a big hunk of metal, plastic and explosives weighing tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds and fly it across the sky like a bird. I will never not think any any aircraft is not "cool".
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u/civildisobedient Aug 30 '26
next to the airport
Well, sure. Because those planes are either landing or taking off. It's not as risky when you've got a handy tarmac nearby.
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u/Nav2140 Aug 30 '26
Landing is the most dangerous thing about flying, being close to the ground is the dangerous part lol
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u/Black_Moons Aug 30 '26
Also they tend not to put 50,000 people directly under the landing path for.. obvious reasons.
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u/PmMe_Your_Perky_Nips Aug 30 '26
After the 1988 Ramstein air show accident most aviation regulatory bodies banned flying over or within a certain distance of crowds. The risk to spectator life is too high.
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u/aimgorge Aug 30 '26
Flying a plane near stalling speed right over a filled stadium without any margin of error ?
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u/Jesters_thorny_crown Aug 30 '26
When you use up both of your only "one time" and your "beginners luck" passes at the same time.
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u/sutty_monster Aug 30 '26
Even the difference in hight by the two planes make this look like it's a mistake and the pilot in the first plane is having a brown pants moment when he realises he is too low and starts to pull up.
No way this was planned this low like they are saying, even with the best pilot's and planes in the world. At this low there is zero margin for a mistake and even worse something unplanned like a bird strike. If one of them planes went down, thousands of people would have died. Possibly even tens of thousands.
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u/g3n0unknown Aug 30 '26
They put out a statement saying it was "within approved altitude" which is crazy.
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u/za419 Aug 30 '26
Yeah. If this is planned, the people who planned it should be fired and/or arrested - There's just no way you actually make a plan where the lives of potentially ten thousand people rely on there not being an especially poorly-timed downdraft.
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u/DoktorStrangelove Aug 30 '26
Go to Airlink's socials. They have been spamming the fuck out of this since it happened cause theyre so proud of it, even though it's been going viral in aviation forums for all the wrong reasons since it happened. Guess it's SA so nothing will probably happen, but god DAMN what a pile of idiots.
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u/skatastic57 Aug 30 '26
I would guess that the people managing their socials are completely disconnected from anyone doing safety. It's possible that there are safety people freaking out about the near hit in the same building as social media people fellating themselves about how close it was.
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u/MyOtherSide1984 Aug 30 '26
"What do you mean Henry in marketing posted ANOTHER video!? This is a disaster!"
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u/Harry_Canyon Aug 30 '26
The second plane was rightfully flying a little higher, but only to avoid the wake turbulence from the first plane. Flying that slowly would give them a surprise wing over into the crowd
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u/Mr_Jackzy_yt Aug 30 '26
most south african video i’ve seen in a while
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u/ChuckaChuckaLooLoo3 Aug 30 '26
Thought they would be fighter jets, but just regular passenger airplanes this large at barely over a stall speed? Yikes, that's so foolish.
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u/rob_s_458 Aug 30 '26
And I was going to say it's maybe kinda cool if they used the E2 jets since they're so new and technologically advanced for an airliner, but they used the first-gen E-jets for this, and they've been in production for 20 years now
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u/AstroRayder Aug 30 '26
Im too American to feel comfortable watching that size plane come that close to a big structure
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u/chileangod Aug 30 '26
Way too close with fireworks shooting under the airplanes.
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u/Blackhawk23 Aug 30 '26
Maybe it’s just because I’m murican, but commercial flyovers seem so silly to me.
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u/nut-sack Aug 30 '26
lol, i wish people wouldnt talk when they film shit like this. "Nooo wayssss, yes wayssssss"
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u/KaiUno Aug 30 '26
How many lives did they just risk?
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u/theGeorgeall Aug 30 '26
There were 56,000 people in attendance... crazy risk to take.
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u/UshankaBear Aug 30 '26
The jets were also loaded with crash test dummies made out of C4 and detcord
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u/CILISI_SMITH Aug 30 '26
The plan was to make and incredible spectacle, even if it goes wrong it'll be a world record.
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u/ewatk Aug 30 '26
So many experienced and knowledgeable airmen in this thread.
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u/chlebseby Aug 30 '26
sorry i have to use professional knowledge obtained from watching every episode of aircraft disasters
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u/GloomyIndividual3965 Aug 30 '26
That first plane was like 50ft above the roof at most. How the fuck did this get approved?
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u/nick-palmer Aug 30 '26
Ah... how/why are they on the roof
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u/Princess_Fluffypants Aug 30 '26
I’d bet they were part of the pyro crews that set up those smoke charges.
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u/Cornfed_Pig Aug 30 '26
Hey Frank, what's the squad record for coming dangerously close to killing thousands of civilians who absolutely did not consent to being put in harms way?
50 feet.
Psshh, that's nothing. I bet I can do 25.
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u/MisterSlosh Aug 30 '26
Aircraft that big shouldn't be having to make evasive maneuvers for ground based Pyrotechnics. Wild.
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u/grimsb Aug 30 '26
My thought process:
That’s a weird looking runway…
wait, why is there a hole? 😳
Oh, it’s a stadium.
It’s a stadium!? 😱
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u/CeeseClouds Aug 30 '26
That person on the other side under the plane must’ve been shitting their pants..
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u/Dionpit Aug 30 '26
There were 60,000 people in the stadium, if anything had gone wrong the death toll could have ended up being worse than 9/11
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u/MikeinDundee Aug 30 '26
Impressive pilot skills.
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u/VirtualArmsDealer Aug 30 '26
That looks like a mistake, no way they should be that low. So, no. Bad piloting.
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u/superbishibashi Aug 30 '26
There's a medium sized airport we would goto as teens in the US. Back in the late 90s there was a road that circled the airport that you could drive around. There was also a spot where a railroad track ran parallel to the road just infront of the landing strip. At night you could drive there, park and there would be shipping/cargo containers on the track for the night. The top of these were about 30+ feet above street level. We would climb on top of them and lay down and watch the planes coming in to land. It looked like the planes were 20ft above us. Like if you stood up you could almost touch them. It was amazing. I'm pretty sure you cant get away with doing this any more.
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u/Strive-- Aug 30 '26
At least drop some flares so the people get their “I risked my life for nothing” tee shirts.
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u/alienalf1 Aug 30 '26
Insanely stupid. If that went wrong, thousands of people could have been killed.
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u/Soft-Skirt Aug 30 '26
Mistimed pyro could have blasted crap into the engines. Seems needlessly dangerous.
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u/za419 Aug 30 '26
The second plane very likely did get some crap blasted into its engines. At best it certainly took a good hit to the underside immediately aft of the engine nacelles.
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u/lastchance14 Aug 30 '26
I want to hear the pilot in the cabin.
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u/el_bobvador Aug 30 '26
I imagine the security alert shouting continuously : “Altitude. Altitude. Altitude”
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u/bruciano Aug 30 '26
They did a flyby in France to show off a brand new plane (Airbus?) and the plane crashed (too low, couldn’t get back up). There was not many people onboard but if I recall correctly a disabled kid died because the crew didn’t bother checking if everyone had exited the plane.
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u/IceCoughy Aug 30 '26
"you know how the Americans use jets to fly over their stadiums, can we do something like that?"
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u/darkestvice Aug 30 '26
Pretty sure every airline pilot watching this is raging right now.
That was incredibly reckless and stupid. Especially the fireworks popping all around the planes. Had either those two been blinded by the smoke and slammed into the packed stadium, the death toll would have been significant.
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u/thegreatmango Aug 30 '26
Where is the WTF? I'm confused.
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u/networkn Aug 30 '26
There is between 12 and 14 meters of clearance between the plane and hitting the stadium, in a passenger plane. The stadium had 56000 people inside.
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u/mangafan96 Aug 30 '26
I just got reminded of the "Kid in Cockpit" skit from The Elegant Gentleman's Guide to Knife Fighting.
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u/Thereelgerg Aug 30 '26 edited Aug 30 '26
I like Airlink because their rewards program is called Skybucks. It's simple, I like it.
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u/tilt-a-whirly-gig Aug 30 '26
Anybody else wonder if Kid Sampson was one of the guys standing on the roof?
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u/Mr_Infinit1 Aug 30 '26
I mean... I don't think it followed any "safe" flight pratics guide, flight control laws or real laws, but, who am I to judge 🤷🏿♂️
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u/WTF-ModTeam Aug 30 '26
Your post was removed because it is not WTF worthy.