http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/10/air_racing.html Red Bull Air Race pictures. I don’t understand how this exists, from both a public safety point of view and a commercial point of view. Eighty people died in the 1955 Le Mans disaster when a Mercedez-Benz 300 SLR jumped into the crowd and caught on fire, leading Mercedes to abandon racing until the 1980s and Switzerland to ban motorsport until 2007. Aircraft are both faster and less able to be restrained by safety barriers, and have a less than enviable safety record even at airshows, where they’re not trying to go particularly fast or dodge things. And: (1) how do you sell tickets, when the course is many kilometers long; (2) why do people buy tickets, when planes go quite fast and are competing against time? 20:45