JEDDAH, 5 February 2005 — Breathtaking! So gushed cheering spectators on the Corniche, as they watched the Flying Bulls Aerobatics Team give a dazzling performance yesterday.

Men, women and children kept gazing at the sky as four members of the team performed spectacular feats, individually and jointly.

Invitees who had gathered at the Movenpick Resort Al Navras burst into endless applause, as the four aircraft performed one act after another over the Corniche sky.

At times they watched the feats with suspense and silence. “I almost took it that the aircraft would hit the ground the way it dropped from a height of a few hundred feet, but in the nick of time it climbed back. It thrilled me and, surely, everyone around,” said Abdul Aziz Zahrani, a Saudi businessman who was there with his family.

“It’s astounding, thrilling, adventurous, exciting, breathtaking,” said Anwar Siddiqui, a Pakistani marketing manager whose children joined the chorus of screams and shouts.

The professional pilots flew classical propeller aircraft wing-to-wing at very high speed and performed several special aerobatic moves, such as the “mirror fight” where the lead aircraft flew upside with a second aircraft flying - right way up - directly beneath it, mirroring every single one of the lead aircraft’s maneuvers. This has been the team’s signature since its creation in the 1960s when its history began before it became the Flying Bulls Aerobatics Team in 1999.

The team also performed the ‘box formation.’ The pilots started in the box formation, changed the aircraft positions both vertically and horizontally during the display and then touched down in joint formation. “For the pilots, it’s nothing more or less than extremely meticulous work — a matter of centimeters because there is one thing that formation flights do not forgive and that is mistakes,” the organizers said.

The four pilots, all from the Czech Republic, who have several thousands of hours of flying experience, said they were looking forward to the visit and satisfied with the overwhelming response from the spectators. The pilots — Jiri Saller, Daniel Polonec, Miroslav Krejci and Radka Machova said they enjoyed seeing the crowds from the cockpit.

“Absolute discipline, concentration, trust and team spirit are the basic ingredients of our team’s success,” one of them said. Often called ‘acrobats of the air,’ the four pilots merge to form a perfect unit during their aerobatic displays.

The show was originally intended to be for 25 minutes, but was extended by 10 minutes.

This was the first live aerial show by an aerobatics team that came here on an invitation from the Saudi Aviation Club and with the support of its Chairman Prince Sultan ibn Salman ibn Abdul Aziz. With this, the team ends its visit to the Kingdom. They came from the UAE to the Kingdom and performed in the Eastern Province and Riyadh last week. They leave today and will next take part in a show in Austria.