“The show will go on… and in honour of Mark Beckley” were the words from an adamant Eddie Voster on the Friday evening after the dreadful incident. Mark Beckley was involved in an incident as part of a practise flight for the air show in his popular Stearman. He did survive the incident but passed away a few hours later as a result of injuries sustained during the incident in a primary health care facility in Polokwane.

Cavalcade

It was only fitting the tenth consecutive Tzaneen air show and the 50th anniversary of the Letaba Flying Club was opened with a cavalcade of emergency vehicles and response teams led by the Vorster brothers in the capacity as the main organisers of the air show. Hovering above the cavalcade were the helicopters which served as incident response platforms in the event of an emergency. This included a Bell 206, a MBB 105 from the SA Police Air Wing, an A109 and an Oryx from 19 Sqdn.