Welcome to TLG and to our series of interviews from the 2021 Bournemouth Air Festival.

Regular listeners to TLG will know that our aviation expert James Cartner is a former RAF Puma pilot. As such he has some kind of weird chip on his shoulder about the mighty Chinook, alleging that all any Chinook crew will talk about is how much it can lift. For the rest of us, and I suspect for James as well although he’d hate to admit it, the Chinook is an incredible aircraft, and its impressive display has long been a crowd favourite. We managed to persuade Chinook Display Captain Matt Smyth, or Smitty, to talk to us, despite James’s grudging hostility. I jest of course, and in fact during our 4 days in Bournemouth we became  great friends with the whole Chinook display team .. well, we like to think we did…