Electric air festival plans underway
KwaZulu-Natal’s finance MEC, Ina Cronje said their driving motto for the festival was taking aviation to the people.
PREPARATIONS for the first ever Durban Land, Sea and Air Festival set to take place in March are in full swing. The free-for-all entertainment spectacle will be held from 20 to 23 March on Durban’s North Beach and the main attraction will be the never seen before Sky Grand Prix where the best pilots in South Africa and five world champion aerobatics pilots will take each other on to see who is the best in the sky.
The eThekwini Municipality and the KwaZulu-Natal Government are behind the project.Speaking at the launch of the festival yesterday, KwaZulu-Natal’s finance MEC, Ina Cronje said their driving motto was “taking aviation to the people”. Cronje added: “There are lots of children who have not ever been in an aeroplane, some who have not even seen an aeroplane. So can you imagine the horizons that are opened up for that child when they are given this opportunity?” Cronje added that the festival was part of the provincial government’s efforts to grow the economy.
“We are currently the second largest economy in the country behind Gauteng and we want to be the first,” she said. The aerobatics show will see the planes race, twist, turn and be pushed to the extreme as they blitz through multi-storey pylons placed on the beachfront piers to complete a flawless aerobatic routine. A ranking system using the National Championships score and a regional contest was conducted to choose the South African participants,” said festival organiser, Brian Emmenis from Capital Sounds.
So far the top six confirmed South African pilots are Nigel Hopkins, Patrick Davidson, Mark Hensman, Barrie Eales, Bertus Du Preez and Johnnie Smith. Emmenis added: “We have been planning the festival since mid-2013 and are very excited to bring this event to Durban. Nowhere else in the country are people able to watch so many exhilarating displays over and in the sea. The Sky Grand Prix of Aerobatics alone will feature world champion pilots who compete against each other regularly on the world aerobatic circuit. It’s going to be electric.”
