The pilot who flew one of two banners over The Hawthorns on Saturday says that a Hong Kong syndicate was behind the pro-Wenger banner
The first banner was paid for by a Crowdfunding campaign of ‘Wenger Out’ supporters who want the Arsenal manager to leave the club at the end of the season.
Simon Moores is a pilot for Airads, the company who flew the banners over the Hawthorns on Saturday, and gave Goal the lowdown on how his day unfolded and exactly what ‘aerial marketing’ entails.
“The Hong Kong group [behind the #RespectAW banner] wanted people to know it was from Hong Kong,” said Moores.
“It’s a huge challenge dealing with fans from crowdsourcing operations because they don’t live in the same world that perhaps I do in terms of always necessarily understanding the risks and the weather. The expectations are always too high and also trying to get the funding together can be difficult.
“What happened on Friday was that both sides exercised an option under the terms and conditions to have me go down there and wait to see if there was a gap. The headwind when I took off was horrendous. At one point I was doing 64 knots - it took two hours to go to Birmingham [from Kent] and only 70 minutes for me to get back."
“If there’s a strong wind it makes it dangerous and if I get it wrong that’s the end of me. Only five of us do the operation in the UK. Yesterday was beyond the marginal limits but I was going to give it a go as I’ve been doing it a long time. In Europe a lot less than a dozen people can do it. A lot of things can go wrong.
“I’ve been a pilot for over 20 years, doing this particular job for almost 12 years. The banner for the referendum over London from the Labour party was me. We do bar mitzvahs, weddings, funerals, masses of football matches, rugby, FA Cup finals. You name it we’ve probably done it. If you can think of anything challenging we’re probably doing it.
“We’ve done every conceivable stunt you can think of. I’ve been tracking it on Twitter and think it is certainly the biggest response we’ve had.”