General Information
Aerobatics competition is not unlike figure skating in an airplane. Each competitor performs a series of flights containing figures that are graded by a team of judges.
Flights take place within an imaginary box, 1000 meters wide and 1000 meters long, clearly marked on the ground for the pilot's guidance. The top of the box is 1000 meters above the ground. The bottom ranges from 100 meters altitude for experienced pilots to 500 meters for beginning aerobatics pilots.
Competitive Classes
There are five classes of competition: Basic, Sportsman, Intermediate, Advanced and Unlimited.
- Basic - In this class, pilots simply fly a known compulsory program, a set of figures published before the contest season.
- Sportsman - Pilots in the sportsman class fly the known compulsory twice, followed by a free program designed by the pilot.
- Intermediate - The intermediate class flies three programs. The known compulsory is more difficult than that used in the basic and sportsman classes. In addition to a free program, intermediate pilots fly an unknown compulsory program, which is distributed just a few hours before the competition and cannot be practiced.
- Advanced - Pilots in this class also fly a known compulsory, an unknown compulsory, and a free program. The compulsory programs are more difficult than those for intermediate pilots.
- Unlimited - This class is open only to highly skilled and experienced aerobatics pilots who fly high-performance planes because of the more difficult figures. Unlimited competition has four parts: Known and unknown compulsories, a free program, and a 4-minute freestyle program that's judged on artistic performance as well as technique.
The compulsory and free programs are limited to 15 minutes each, beginning at the moment when the plane enters the competition box. Figures performed after the time limit are not scored.
Judging
At world championships and other major competitions, there are seven to ten judges, plus four positioning judges, one at each corner of the box. The positioning judges are primarily responsible for determining whether a competitor flies outside the box.
Each judge is given a copy of the figures to be flown, depicted through a system of symbols developed by Jose L. Aresti of Spain. Each figure has a "K factor," or difficulty coefficient. The pilot's score for a given figure begins as a perfect 10, and the judge deducts penalty points for various infringements of the rules or imperfections in performance.
Penalties are imposed, for example, for flying outside the box, for interrupting the program to correct course, and for being forced to climb in order to regain the necessary altitude. Figures are judged on precision, symmetry, and other components specified by the International Aerobatic Club.
The judge's raw score for a figure is multipled by its K factor to determine the score, and a computer scoring program adjusts the totals, through statistical averaging, to remove inconsistencies or bias.
In the 4-minute freestyle program, individual figures are not judged. Instead, each judge scores the total performance on a scale from 0 to 10, based on its difficulty, versatility, and overall artistic impression.