Oh my ! look at this ...... "joy flights" in a Avro Avian or a de Havilland Moth are advertised at 10s 6d each !! that was quite expensive then though !! :cry_smile:
In the original article, it talks of three people being killed in crashes in the 1927 Bournemouth Air Festival. By a coincidence, I was reading about two of them the other day. I have been reading "The Eighth Sea", the autobiography of the famous test pilot Frank Courtney. (A fantastic book if you can get it - its probably well out of print now. He started as an apprentice with the Grahame-White Aircraft Company at Hendon in 1913, and ended up working on the specifications for the Atlas ballistic missile which launched the first US space missions). He says: "In 1927 I was flying a DH Moth in a handicap race at the Bournemouth Air Meeting. In the approach to the second-last pylon I took the lead from Longton, who was flying a Blackburn Bluebird. ...I saw that Openshaw was overhauling us both in his Westland Wagtail. At the actual pylon turn, the other two were bare yards behind me.....I turned the last pylon alone and won the race. As I circled to land I saw a cloud of black smoke arising from alongside the second-last pylon. ....Longton and Openshaw had collided right behind my tail and both been killed. Longton was one of the best-known pilots in the RAF and had recently been giving me night-bombing training as a reserve officer. Openshaw had worked with me on several test jobs. The game was beginning to get tough."
