I'm flying a few thousand feet over Lincolnshire
with the Red Arrows, the Royal Air Force aerobatic team.
And maybe this is patriotism talking,
but they are the best aerobatic team anywhere in the world.
Aircraft flying at hundreds of miles an hour
just metres apart from each other.
Not just in level flight either.
They do things like this.
- Here at the Red Arrows, we fly the BAE Systems Hawk T-Mk1
powered by the Rolls Royce Adour Engine.
We've flown them here in the Red Arrows since 1980
which is obviously a reasonable time,
but they are perfect for what they do.
They are sprightly, they're fast,
they're simple to operate, and they're a pilot's aircraft.
Today, we're going to have seven aircraft of our total of nine in the display.
We fly 6 to 11 feet apart in the air. We're doing actually about 400 mph.
The skill of formation flying is essentially triangulating a position.
So you have two references that you're looking at.
One at the front and one at the back of another aircraft.
And as long as you line up both those references perfectly,
you will be in the exact formation position.
We train for approximately seven months
before we even display anywhere near the public.
We fly the same display for almost four months of those seven,
and it's a building-block approach to get us to the stage where we are absolutely
safe, professional and excellent enough to display in front of the public.
- So the question is: how is it possible
to safely fly this close and perform manoeuvres this precise?
Part of it is training, trust, and talent,
but part of it is a skill that you probably already know,
keeping your distance from the car in front
when you're driving on a highway.
It's just that instead of working in one dimension,
these pilots are working in three.
Or, if you count time, maybe even four.
- My job as a team leader is to annunciate
to all the team pilots where I'm going
and when I'm going to do it.
So we have a very metronomic radio voice to let them know--
"Coming, right, now."
"Hold-ing-the-bank, now."
Hold-ing-the-bank, now.
Everything is done on that cadence
and the guys know when I'm going to make that input.
The actual art of formation flying, in itself, is reasonably straight forward.
So the relative motion between the aircraft is meant to be zero.
And the only time that we have any relative movement between the aircraft
is when we're asking the pilots to change shape.
For the pilots who are up there, whilst they might be upside down at 100 feet,
to them the other aircraft don't look like they're moving at all.
So you can be too high or too low, which we call too shallow or deep.
You can be too far forwards or too far backwards,
which we call short or long.
And of course, this being a three-dimensional game,
you can be too close, or too tight as we call it,
or too far away from the other aircraft, which is what we call wide.
But it's also about timing.
So we're trying to, as the Red Arrows, make it look like we're one wing
that's moving beautifully in graceful formation.
And to do that, the guys who are furthest away from me as the leader
need to know when I'm going to turn.
I expect them to have already started putting their inputs
if they're along way away from me,
and if they don't, they're behind the time and it's going to look like a broken chair.
Every formation shape and every formation position
has a different route to get out of that formation quickly and safely enough.
They're what we call the escape strategies, but every manoeuvre is different.
So the pilots are not only remembering which manoeuvre's next
but also how to escape from that manoeuvre when it's coming up.
The pilots here on my team have an inordinate amount of trust in each other.
They have a prescribed piece of airspace next to the aircraft that they're formating on.
That's what we call the box.
And the pilot who's flying next to them trusts
that they're never going to be outside of that box of formation.
- Thank you to the Red Arrows, to the RAF, and Rolls Royce.
At some point I'll be over in their Starrship channel,
so have a look at the links on screen or in the description!
[laughter]
Oh wow! [laughter]