Vampire Literally Rips Up Runway During Air Show-You Gotta See It To Believe It

Maintenance, Maintenance, Maintenance.

Air shows are super fun, and once in a while something happens that stuns everyone. It could be a low flyby, a sneak pass or a particularly nice collection of planes. In this case, it was a plane tearing up the runway with its exhaust.

The incident happened at the Wolverhampton Halfpenny Green Airport in the U.K.  During initial power up of the Viper, the tarmac already started to chip away and as you’ll see in the video, once the pilot let her rip (no pun intended) there were giant pieces of asphalt flying everywhere.

“The aircraft has a five degree nose up attitude whilst on the ground, thus the jet blast is vectored more towards the ground as compared to other jets.”-Graham Innes | Youtube Uploader

In the end, the Vampire had to land on another runway due to the fear of sucking in debris or simply losing control on contact. That was a good idea because although there are some 80 Vampires still around the world, only a few of them are airworthy. As for the runway, it took about 20 minutes to clean up and it’s going to be repaired.

Hopefully with something that sticks better.