If that's your metric, then there's no legitimate public interest in releasing any information about it ever. His plane was 1 of 1. And if it was a medical event, that only affects him. So the probability of this accident's cause having an affect on other aviation activities or public safety is quite low.
OK we’ll circle the wagons then.
We lost a local airshow pilot, Andrew Wright, 10 years ago in his Giles 202. It was determined that there was poor bond quality during construction. He routinely pulled 9+ G's and posted it on social media. The entire tail came off during an airshow practice. Still hard to think about.
Not necessarily. If there was a problem with the plane, it might be something that other aircraft have in common, whether it’s materials, how it’s assembled, or other characteristics. If it was medical, there might be a factor that others share.
Sure. There are often photographers snapping pics of every performer and static arrival.
I remember the highly sophisticated tool and technique we used on the first carbon fiber composite parts in the USAF to detect delaminations. The tool was a Quarter coin and the technique was to tap the surface and listen for a funky sound. Can’t imagine what gazzilion dollar gizmos they use now.
It's the same coin. Only now it costs $50,000 and has to be handled by a civilian contractor with a supervisor observing.
Are you kidding? There are people that take video of every boring commuter jet that lands at an airport all day long. It's a bit weird, but it is true.
They’re not even close to as weird as the guys who watch trains and keep detailed records of the engine numbers and what kind of cars it’s towing. Or guys who pay to go on airline flights just to update their “logbook” with a new sub-sub-model they’ve ridden on. Oh boy, I’ve finally gotten to go on a 737-8Z21! The stitching on the seats is cream colored instead of off-white!
If it didn't happen on a rather secure military base, I don't think you'd be as refreshed.
Same method but some OEMs came up with small tap hammers as holding a coin for extended periods tended to get a bit tedious. Here's the Diamond method and a pic of a tap hammer.
The likelihood of someone with line of sight for RWY8 captain’s bars at Langley violating the restrictions around filming sensitive areas is kind of low.
If it had a NSN, it would be at least $1000
The problem with that is that the wing is a single spar, complete carry-through, not bolted on. So, it is hard to imagine how one wing would separate.
Exactly. Of course, it could be that neither performer actually said what was attributed to him.
Purely speculatively, if the failure point was outside of the fuselage then 90% of that wing could separate and the rest would remain attached to the fuselage. That doesn't seem that hard to imagine.
We'll see. Just hypothesising on the basis of what are now multiple reports of wing separation.
"Rated" to 16G based on something. Testing or theoretical? And regularly stressed to 12G or more. I know a decade ago at least, NDT of composite airplane structures was still a problem to be solved and $$$.
And someone above mentioned a previous incident, without describing what it was. If that happened, there are a lot of ways that could have stressed something in the wing without being obvious.
And why haven't they come forward?
Maybe they have. If I had witnessed an accident, I wouldn’t do any tv interviews and I sure wouldn’t post anything on social media. I’d make a statement to the NTSB and let them release the details at the appropriate time.
I don't know. I have no experience flying the high performance monoplanes, and cornering speed is not a civilian acro concept that is discussed in competition, at least not at my level. Maneuvering speed for the MXS is 161 kts, and Vne is 230, if that helps.
They would not come forward in public. They would discuss in private.
It's sounding more like an obstruction/blockage than a failure of the elevator control system. Pretty sure they have what's needed to detail everything in the final, I just hope it happens.
Two Acro Pilots in two planes have flight control failures you say?
