Airlink’s rugby flypast goes viral: spectacular stunt or safety risk?
Two Airlink jets in Springbok green and All Black livery buzzed DHL Stadium in Cape Town on Saturday, clearing the roof by less than 15 metres just before the second test series kicked off in front of 55,000 fans.
Footage of the flypast has since travelled well beyond rugby circles, landing on international news bulletins and racking up views across social platforms: a genuine earned-media moment, though not an uncomplicated one.
The stunt was months in the planning. Airlink signed on as the tour’s official domestic airline in June, unveiled the two specially painted Embraer E-Jets in July, and used the Cape Town test as the moment to fly both together for the first time.
Flight-tracking data put the lead aircraft’s lowest recorded altitude at just 41 to 46 feet above the stadium roof, close enough that clips of the pass looked, to plenty of viewers, unnervingly dramatic.
Airlink has defended the manoeuvre as tightly controlled rather than improvised.
“The flight data recorded by both aircraft confirms that the flights were performed within the SACAA’s approved and rehearsed safety altitude and speed limits for the flypast,” the airline said, adding that each jet carried three senior captains and that the operation had “full support” from South Africa’s civil aviation authority.
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That reassurance hasn’t fully settled the debate. Alongside admiration for the precision flying, the footage has drawn real safety criticism and calls for regulators to review it, a reminder that a stunt built for spectacle can generate headlines for the wrong reasons just as easily as the right ones.
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