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Google "air show" and it brings up the auto-suggestion "air show crash." Not "air show stunts" or "air show fun": air show crash. Google "air show disasters" and you get a Wikipedia page detailing the list of horrific accidents that have occurred, beginning in 1911, when airplanes barely even worked properly.There isn't space to list them all here, but here's a quick rundown of just a few:READ ON MOTHERBOARD: It's Time for Robot Pilots
- There was the Sknyliv disaster in Ukraine, where—in 2002—a Ukrainian air force jet cartwheeled and exploded into a crowd of 10,000 people, killing 77 and injuring 543. The pilots ejected to safety.
- The 1938 Usaquen, Colombia crash, where an air force lieutenant attempted to dive through a narrow gap between two grandstands, failed, crashed, and exploded, raining flaming debris down on spectators. Up to 100 were killed.
- In August of 1988, 300,000 turned out to watch the Ramstein air show at a US air base in West Germany. Seventy people died when the Italian Air Force stunt pilots collided in mid-air and plummeted to the ground.
- At a recreation of the Battle of Britain in August of 2000, Ted Girdler's Aero L-29 Delfin jet failed to pull up from a diving roll and smashed into the English Channel. The show resumed within two hours after they'd fished his body out of the sea.
- In Mulhouse, France, in 1988, an Air France passenger plane did a fly-by, skimmed the top of some trees, crash landed, and caught fire, killing three of the 196 people on board, including a disabled boy who couldn't move to evacuate and a girl who couldn't undo her seat belt.
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