Mid Air DE Bay

I saw the clip of the crash on the news. One of the planes was an EZ Long. It seemed very odd like they were practicing for an air show. There appeared to be a flight of six planes, two groups of three that flew directly at each other like you see at airshows. The groups sucessfully passed each other and then one of the planes started to climb and climbed right into another both were going the same direction. The third plane in that group lagged behind a bit and looked to have flow right through the wreckage. I also though it odd that it appeared that most of the planes were of a different types. Wonder what they were up to.
 
I saw some video on www.nbc10.com couldn't tell the aircraft types from the display resolution on my laptop. I think the commentary that went with the video described the group as the Vulture flight team.

Len
 
Story I read said they were RV-8's.

Sad day.
 
For those who were reading the air-to-air photo thread, keep in mind that the six pilots of the Vultures team are/were all highly experienced and FFI-certified formation pilots. While what they were doing was well beyond the FFI program, it just goes to show that formation flying has serious risks which the untrained cannot expect to manage successfully.
 
Ron Levy said:
For those who were reading the air-to-air photo thread, keep in mind that the six pilots of the Vultures team are/were all highly experienced and FFI-certified formation pilots. While what they were doing was well beyond the FFI program, it just goes to show that formation flying has serious risks which the untrained cannot expect to manage successfully.
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The Thunderbirds ran an entire formation flight into the dirt during a vertical manuever. The military regularly clips wings and looses birds in simple formation flight. No one mentions lack of training. But a couple civilians splash two and the Monday morning quarterbacks are certain it was a lack of training issue.

How about we wait for the NTSB report before assigning causitive factors?

Sheesh.
 
Ed Guthrie said:
How about we wait for the NTSB report before assigning causitive factors?
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The NTSB report certainly may come back with a report that says some gizmo in one of the planes was broken which caused the crash like the referenced Thunderbirds crash. That said, I don't need to wait for the NTSB report to know that pointing my plane toward a group of other planes coming the other way at the same altitude is risky and really not for me.

Len
 
Ed Guthrie said:
The Thunderbirds ran an entire formation flight into the dirt during a vertical manuever. The military regularly clips wings and looses birds in simple formation flight. No one mentions lack of training. But a couple civilians splash two and the Monday morning quarterbacks are certain it was a lack of training issue.
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Ed completely misunderstood what I meant to say, so let me try again.

This was a well-trained, fully qualified, highly experienced team working to a set program, and they still had an intraformation mid-air. As Ed notes, even the best trained and disciplined military formation flying occasionally ends in disaster. My point, which it seems I did not express clearly enough, is that this accident should scare the bejesus out of anyone contemplating untrained or unbriefed formation flying (reference the thread on air-to-air photography involving non-formation-trained pilots). It, like the accidents Ed mentioned, shows that even the best trained formation pilots can have problems that overcome their skill and experience. To find out what the problem was in this case, yes, we'll have to wait for the report. But no matter what the cause was, I think we can still agree that if this can happen to a team as well-trained as the Vultures, formation flying is most definitely not for the untrained.

Roger that, Ed?
 
Ron Levy said:
But no matter what the cause was, I think we can still agree that if this can happen to a team as well-trained as the Vultures, formation flying is most definitely not for the untrained.

Roger that, Ed?
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Amen.
 
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