Palavas airshow: with the aerobatic team of the Hérault flying club, behind the scenes of their preparation

Meeting aérien de Palavas : avec l'équipe de voltige de l'aéroclub de l'Hérault, dans les coulisses de leur préparation. Midi Libre – JEAN-MICHEL MART

Three aerobatic pilots, including a world champion and a vice-champion, accompanied the Patrouille de France in its annual show above Palavas.

The Patrouille de France took over the Palavasian sky this Thursday, July 18, but not without them. Specializing in aerobatics, Thierry Amar, Florent Oddon and François Rallet also took to the skies to offer the public a spectacle of risky pirouettes. We met them just before they took off.

Palavas airshow: with the aerobatic team of the Hérault flying club, behind the scenes of their preparation. Midi Libre – JEAN-MICHEL MART

Shortly after 2pm, Hérault Occitanie flying club, in Mauguio. The pilots get dressed in their overalls and start their briefing before takeoff, scheduled for 3:24pm sharp. They will have 13 minutes of show, no more. Everything is ready, as it has been for the past 18 years.

“This is our favorite meeting”, smiles Thierry Amar. Chief pilot and vice-president of the aeroclub, he has been flying planes since 1989. "It is the sporty and very structured side of aerobatics" that led him to devote himself to it. He is checking the last details of the CAP-231 EX that he will be piloting in a few moments. "We try to fly at home as much as possible. It's our way of saying that we're here."

"We fly all the time"

A pilot in the Air Force, Florent Oddon is the reigning world champion in aerobatics. With his colleagues, in the sky, "there are no big surprises", he assures. "We all have a lot of experience and almost the same training."

Palavas airshow: with the aerobatic team of the Hérault flying club, behind the scenes of their preparation. Midi Libre – JEAN-MICHEL MART

"We fly all the time", confirms François Rallet, world aerobatics vice-champion, the third pilot who completes the team. "We don’have no undertraining problem. As in every season, we practiced several times during the year.

"Now, we are going to do what’we call music", says Florent. This term designates the last repetition of acrobatics. The three men use their bodies to simulate piloting a plane, with their arms acting as wings. A kind of dance that allows them to "remove doubts". François recalls the importance of& ;nbsp;individual responsibility, coordination and communication between them.

After about thirty minutes of preparation, the time has come. The aerobatic team leaves the airfield to join Palavas and open the show, just before the Patrouille de France.

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