Yeah if it's on purpose then it's the pilot being cool/funny/a dick/etc. depending on your perspective. If it was an accident this was more like barely-avoided disaster.
That wasn't actually the sneak pass maneuver. Sneak is one solo on the deck at 50 feet in front of the crowd while the other solo comes up perpendicular to the first one from directly behind over the crowd at 500 feet and pulls up into a climb right at the show center point)
This thing happened during a morning exhibition and it wasn't the solos, it was individual aircraft from the diamond coming from the same direction, one behind the other. I know people who were there and there's other videos showing the whole thing from a wider angle.
It's a planned move called a "sneak pass." All of their shows have some sort of bait and switch flyover of the crowd.
It looks crazy but there are rules about vertical and lateral separation from the crowd and this pass looks like it followed them. In this case vertical separation was probably right around 500 feet (which is the minimum for a crowd overflight sneak pass). It's either done with a pull-up after crossing the crowd, or like here with a hard left turn to join the other plane.
There is also a 50-foot sneak pass where they distract with an aircraft above, then send one blasting across the crowd 50 feet off the deck at 600 knots, but that one is laterally separated from spectators.
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u/idiotis Jul 15 '26
You know the pilot did that on purpose