Event
Floor exercise
Skill type
Acrobatic
Value
A
Known as
Side aerial
Aerial cartwheel
Free cartwheel
About
From 2013-2016, the side aerial was the second most common way (behind only the front aerial) of circumventing the requirement for a forward/sideward acrobatic element by just throwing this into the middle of the routine randomly. I mean, doing this instead of a front aerial basically made you an original difficulty queen.
The rule was changed in 2017 so that the forward acrobatic element needed to be part of an actual tumbling line, and the tacked-on side aerial immediately disappeared.
You could also do an aerial round-off and have it count as the same skill, but the one-foot landing of the cartwheel is the more fluid choice for maybe, possibly, potentially dancing out of it.