L-39 Crash At Quad City Airshow

35 AoA said:
It isn't just the age, I still feel rusty after a week or two out of the cockpit. Then again I have a great FCS making me look good even when I'm not. The rejoin has probably killed more guys and broken more jets than anything else. Whenever I bring the heat like that, I'm always stepped down in case I goon it away....I'm sure you did/do the same. Crazy thing about the blues is that they do that co altitude and do it for keeps
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If everyone in the fleet flew as often and intensely on those skills as the Blues, they'd all be much better at that sort of thing. Of course, they wouldn't be very good in a dogfight or on the bombing range -- Law of Exercise, and all that. Now, which skills are more important to a fleet aviator?
 
MSPAviator said:
They take the original ejection seats out of those things for civilian use, right? Judging from the announcer I bet they collided.
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No.. they do not. At least not the several I've climbed into. The seats are in, and the checklist has pages with ejection envelope parameters, as well as egress instructions for when the seat fails
 
Doggtyred said:
No.. they do not. At least not the several I've climbed into. The seats are in, and the checklist has pages with ejection envelope parameters, as well as egress instructions for when the seat fails
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The seats are in but the vast majority have had to deactivate them for civilian ops. The ones that operate on government contracts are exempt and many of those still have active seats.


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Ron Levy said:
If everyone in the fleet flew as often and intensely on those skills as the Blues, they'd all be much better at that sort of thing. Of course, they wouldn't be very good in a dogfight or on the bombing range -- Law of Exercise, and all that. Now, which skills are more important to a fleet aviator?
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Oh absolutely. Though I will say the guy who just checked into my airwing coming back from the blues did just fine at the boat during deck cert last month :)
 
Wish I could say the same. Flight Safety's 421 Sim had the Enterprise doing night traps off the coast, and my reward for a good session was the opportunity to land on the boat. There was no damage to the boat or the airplane, since I never touched it.

35 AoA said:
Oh absolutely. Though I will say the guy who just checked into my airwing coming back from the blues did just fine at the boat during deck cert last month :)
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35 AoA said:
Oh absolutely. Though I will say the guy who just checked into my airwing coming back from the blues did just fine at the boat during deck cert last month :)
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He probably had mad skillz.


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That was a friend of a friend of mine. Really sad. That group was quite proficient as far as I knew.
 
Ron Levy said:
If everyone in the fleet flew as often and intensely on those skills as the Blues, they'd all be much better at that sort of thing. Of course, they wouldn't be very good in a dogfight or on the bombing range -- Law of Exercise, and all that. Now, which skills are more important to a fleet aviator?
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At the recent Great State of Maine Airshow at former NAS Brunswick, the Blues didn't appear. Government cutbacks - they only made one New England appearance this year(Pease, NH). The Thunderbirds returned, last being here in 1995. I was near the north end of 8000'. The Birds came in a formation of four, from the north, at considerable altitude. All attention focused on the cluster, suddenly and seemingly out of nowhere,ZZZOOWWWWW, two came from the south from behind and over our left shoulders. They were close, with right wingtips to the ground and couldn't have been more than 200' AGL. We could feel the ground vibrate as two of us simultaneously exclaimed, "Holy ****!". When the two made the return pass one of them broke off. "Hey, that's not how they did that routine yesterday." And he landed. ???????????? An alternate plane joined the routines. ????????
Bird strike! During volunteers' lunch the next day I was sitting at the Thunderbirds pilots' table. A bird had hit the very top edge of the canopy. Negligible damage but had required his landing the plane for examination.
They put on a terrific show.

HR
 
Formed up for a look at the damage, and overhead break to a landing, right now, eh? ;)

At first I thought you were describing the "sneak pass" which has become a staple of the Blues and the Birds. Draw the attention of the crowd to the diamond while the solos "sneak" off behind the crowd and come roaring overhead in burner.

It's always damn loud.

Always fun to watch for the setup for that with your head 90 degrees nonchalantly away from the flight line and watch the crowd instinctively duck as one, when the sound hits them... Heh. Just act like you're looking around.

I never bring the camera up and shoot the sneak pass. It gives it away and ruins the fun of watching the unsuspecting folks in the crowd. ;)

Unfortunately even though Karen has never seen a jet team in person, she's in on that one. We'll see how high she jumps at GJT. :) :) :)
 
Airshow performances are dangerous. I doubt one could escape from a piston aircraft at that altitude with that kind of catastrophic malfunction, and they've no ejection seat at all.

The history of air shows is written in blood. I cringe to thing about the number of airshow performances I've witnessed from now dead pilots. Even military airshow pilots have crashed, some spectacularly so.

RIP, truly. Guy was probably an awesome pilot, honestly. Just pushing it that close to the ragged edge is inherently dangerous, and after all is said and done, we're all just humun beans.
 
steingar said:
Airshow performances are dangerous. I doubt one could escape from a piston aircraft at that altitude with that kind of catastrophic malfunction, and they've no ejection seat at all.
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It can be done, but you really have to know what you are doing and do it without thinking about it. Pretty sure the P-51 at Duxford was lower than that when the Spad hit him. But, I would say that such cases are certainly the exception rather than the norm.




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How much anyone wanna bet it was a maintenance issue...:( I see a lot of iffy stuff on these "cheap jets" that don't turn out to be as cheap as expected.
 
Fearless Tower said:
It can be done, but you really have to know what you are doing and do it without thinking about it. Pretty sure the P-51 at Duxford was lower than that when the Spad hit him. But, I would say that such cases are certainly the exception rather than the norm.
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I remember a number of folks saying that pilot religiously practiced his bail-out routine, too... he was unstrapped and over the rail QUICK in that one.
 
airguy said:
new video out now shows closeup of the breaking manuever, there was no contact. Possible jet wash encounter causing some type of airframe damage or compressor blade stall?

http://www.cnn.com/video/?hpt=hp_t3#/video/us/2012/09/02/kaye-air-show-crash.cnn
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Well for what it's worth, those who said he was undertrained can rest assured now, that was not the case.

However I would have rather learned that it was his fault. I am sure whoever worked on the plane now feels about 10x worse.
 
Pilot is described by locals who had know him well for many years as a meticulous guy. Any number of possibilities at this point.

Henning said:
How much anyone wanna bet it was a maintenance issue...:( I see a lot of iffy stuff on these "cheap jets" that don't turn out to be as cheap as expected.
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wabower said:
Pilot is described by locals who had know him well for many years as a meticulous guy. Any number of possibilities at this point.
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Yep, east block parts aren't known for being the highest quality either. What the last video showed that I suspected is that there was no collision involved since there was no trace of it in the prior videos.
 
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