Air Show Crash

Did anyone else here hear about this? Before you click on the video, be aware that while it doesn't show anything particularly graphic, its a plane crash that the pilot didn't survive.

I didn't see it, but I saw him flying shortly before it happened, and was close enough to hear the sudden silence, see the black smoke, then finally hear sirens a while later. I don't understand why they wouldn't have been more prepared for a fire at an event like that, I wouldn't be at all surprised if he had survived the crash if they had been able to get the fire out faster, the plane had an canopy on it so getting out with it upside down wouldn't have been possible. I kinda also wonder if he was having trouble with the plane, because probably only 15 minutes before that happened, I saw him stop in the middle of his routine and kinda fly in a slow circle for about 30 seconds before continuing, but who knows.

that sucks....if you got to go i guess you want go doing something you love......

At the air shows I've seen there are usually trucks staged in the area. As for downtown they do them over the Mississippi and in that case there are usually fire rescue boats and a few Coast Guard boats hanging about.

I hadn't seen that particular video. That plane didn't crash as much as it landed upside down. Seems likely that he dies from smoke and/or fire and not the actual impact.

Googling "air show crash" leads me to believe that a very large percentage of all air plane crashes happen there. And that a lot of people are entertained by watching spectacular deaths.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: And that a lot of people are entertained by watching spectacular deaths.

That fact needs no googling.

T.J. wrote: I hadn't seen that particular video. That plane didn't crash as much as it landed upside down. Seems likely that he dies from smoke and/or fire and not the actual impact.

I think so too, its hard to tell from the video, but it looks like he killed the engine after the plane stopped moving too, because it could keep running upside down otherwise.

While I can understand needing to keep a clear area where people are flying like that, I can't think of a single reason not to have fire trucks staged close enough to actually see what happened and be rolling before the plane even stopped. There were plenty of places there that were outside of the required clear space that would have allowed them to respond much faster.

Air shows are kinda barbaric. Formula 1 is pretty dangerous, but they've put hundreds of millions of dollars into making those cars withstand incredible accidents. MMA is dangerous, but the ref is there to keep people from killing eachother.

It would be akin to a few hundred people cheering on free climbers. Sure, they are experts in their field, but when something goes wrong, someone dies.

I witnessed an air show plane crash last summer - it was notable in that the pilot 1) crashed in a controlled manner, and 2) walked away. He apparently had an engine problem during the ribbon-cutting demonstration; he made it back to field but had to land with the wind, so he was too fast. His choices were to cross the road at the end of the field and try to miss traffic and power lines or to throw it into the trees - he wisely chose the latter.

I've got pictures of it somewhere - I'll try to dig them up.

Airplanes are not designed to fly upside down. Maintaining lift is very tricky.

Doing it close to the ground is even more so.

In reply to iceracer:

Cars were not designed to drive on ice. Maintaining traction is very tricky.

Doing it while racing is even more so.

Room for error in flying upside down 20' off the deck? Zero. Death.

Room for error on an ice racing track? Hundreds of feet, and even then we're talking about messing up body panels.

I'd probably say from a risk-of-injury standpoint that Ice Racing is the safest form of wheel-to-wheel motorsport, and borderline safer than autocross. Now, safer for your wallet or your car? Not really...

In reply to PHeller:

You forgot the falling through the ice aspect.......

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: Googling "air show crash" leads me to believe that a very large percentage of all air plane crashes happen there. And that a lot of people are entertained by watching spectacular deaths.

I think you are making a HUGE assumption here.

I have seen a lot of airshows. I have seen 3 people die, all at Reno, all racers (no performers). I can assure you, it is NOT entertaining. Watching the wing, then the tail of a plane come off, then watching it helplessly fall into the ground is NOT something I want to see again!

As with many other things. The POTENTIAL of danger certainly makes things interesting. But joy in watching people die, that's just F&*king sick! and I don't think it's true.

I forgot the

My point was while the original intent if the airplane was not to fly upside down, I guarantee you that the acrobatic airplane that crashed was designed to do just that...just like the original intent of the automobile was not to race, but race cars are designed specifically for that purpose.

That video does not show the response time, and it's very hard to see the distances because of perspective, but you have to consider that the spaces involved can be a lot larger then they look on the video. They certainly do have fire crews on hand at any airshow, but those ramps are rather large.

I had heard the show was a bit windy, and he had made a few approaches. You can see in the video, the plane appears to stall are loose power as he drops towards the runway. Something appears to have affected the plane. Maybe the headwind he had disappeared? Engine sputtered?

As a follow up for perspective:

Here is the ramp at Travis:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Travis+Air+Force+Base/@38.2609503,-121.9436454,1006m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x80853f032199fda1:0xf9d2e8f7782f915c

Note that the planes in the middle are C5A Galaxies! Those are HUGE planes!

In reply to aircooled:

Might have, you could here him open the throttle right as it started going down to try to regain lift.

iceracer wrote: Airplanes are not designed to fly upside down. Maintaining lift is very tricky. Doing it close to the ground is even more so.

Sure they are. Its called a symmetrical airfoil.

Maintaining lift is relatively simple. Maintaining control, however, is often not. I will not argue

about proximity to the ground, though.

iceracer wrote: Airplanes are not designed to fly upside down. Maintaining lift is very tricky. Doing it close to the ground is even more so.

Just to pile on to Iceracer a bit more: (sorry )

There is also something called Ground Effect. Lift is noticeably increased when an aircraft is within a wingspan length of the ground. This is what makes Ekranoplans fly and why seabirds skim the surface of the sea.

Ground effect should have made it easier for him to pull out or ovoid hitting the ground.

In reply to aircooled:

Those Ekranoplans need a good bit of speed and flap to do that though don't they?

Yup, they are super heavy. Just shows how much ground effect there is though. No way those would actually fly.

If you don't ice race you are missing a lot of fun.

I was going to say something about a symmetrical airfoil. Point is , most lift is created by the angle of incidence. Looks as if that plane didn't have enough. We will never know exactly what happened.