That’s better said as “P-63 collides with B-17”. But the results were equally catastrophic regardless of how one describes it.
I’d be surprised if they had paying riders onboard the B-17 while it was performing in an airshow. But it certainly had a crew onboard. As did the P-63.
While this mishap (probably) has nothing to do with the pre-impact mechanical condition of the airplanes, I wonder when it’ll be time to retire the last 1940s-era hastily built and now well-worn war machine from the skies.
Any ideas on what actually happened here? The P-63 didn’t have any obvious mechanical failure, visibility appears fine, and yet the P-63 seemed to head straight toward the B-17. It’s hard to wrap my head around.
Sadly, the problems surrounding flying these old war birds will apparently solve themselves, given time. Though I’d rather they end up in a museum than this fate.
IMO, there are plenty of static warbirds out there. The ones that are still in flying condition should keep on flying.
That collission sure looked strange. The P-63 looked like it was traveling at high speed, angled somewhat towards the ground. I wonder if the pilot thought he’d demonstrate a mock strafing run on the B-17 and hit it by accident. It sure didn’t look like a normal manoever that close to the ground.
No way to know for sure this soon, and probably not ever.
IMO …
The most likely explanation is the P-63 pilot was looking at something else. He was turning to align himself to a runway or other ground reference. He had no reason to know the B-17 was there and simply didn’t see it. Flying a plane is not like driving a car in that very, very often you’re not looking exactly where you’re going. You’re looking at other things and in the near term of a few seconds there simply isn’t anything to hit along your immediate flight path. Until suddenly there is.
I have participated in a couple of flybys at airshows. Other than that my involvement in airshows has been purely as a spectator. In my admittedly tiny experience, the deconfliction of the various acts from one another is a bit haphazard. There is a plan, there is somebody on the ground in charge, but stuff still happens. Nobody is all that familiar with the local area and landmarks, nobody is familiar with all the other acts in the air, and there’s a natural convergence of flight paths at the two ends of the “stage” so to speak.
Add in airplanes that fly at 200 knots and those that fly at 400 knots and there’s all sorts of room for fatal intersections.
Two dedicated threads have been started by other posters about this accident. One in IMHO, the other in MPSIMS. I’ve reported them for consolidation which I expect to happen soon.
Thanks, watching the video a few more times, this seems plausible. Hard to be 100% sure of the geometry, but it looks like that for much of the lead-up, the B-17 would have been behind the P-63, visibility wise.
I expect the NTSB to work things out pretty well, though. The event was well-recorded and they should be able to work out the exact flight path and what each pilot would have been able to see. Not to mention why they were in such close proximity in the first place. There may be some final hole in the swiss cheese that they can’t determine 100%, some obvious error that the pilot made, but as always there’s going to be some long series of events that turn an innocuous mistake into a tragedy.
Another angle - this is the one where it looked like the B-17 was going relatively straight and the P-63 looked like it turned and descended into it.
But after looking at a bumch of videos from different angles, it looks like maybe the P-63 was turning final, and the B-17 was not visible to the P-63 pilot.
I’ve never been to an air show where ATC controls the choreography of the show participants. They simply clear the participants in and out of the block.
Pictures of the P-63 cockpit have shown up in my social media. Visibility downward is poor to say the least, and nonexistent through the wings. Watching the videos and looking at what the leading fighters did, it seems like they were doing fast strafing-like passes on the B-17. Once the P-63 pilot rolled into his turn, the bomber would have been invisible (effectively underneath) to him and that he just based on his sense of where he was relative to the other plane, he didn’t turn tight enough to stay inside the track of the B-17.
WTF. Air show flyby’s are set up so participants operate on an assigned altitude. they should be in trail and in sight of each other on their assigned altitude.
My understanding is that the horizontal stabilizer is typically set up to provide negative lift. Lose that, and the rest of the plane is going to nose-down, fast. Though it really couldn’t have made more than a few seconds difference even had that not been the case.
As to ATC, they have no role. The airshow management “owns” the airspace within a few miles of the airport and a few thousand feet up of the duration of the show. The usual FAA ATC is out of the picture.
There is a script and somebody (the “air boss”) in charge of managing the gaggle. But his role is essentially timekeeping and such. “OK, mass gaggle of bombers and fighters: the preceding aerobatic act is just ending. Leave your holding patterns now and proceed to show center getting into your positions along the way per the show plan.”
Everything after that in all its detail is down to each pilot doing the right thing at the right time versus all the other airplanes and the ground to end up in the right 3D place versus everybody else going the right direction at the right speed and all at the right time.
@Magiver’s right about the result of all that maneuvering. But he leaves out the part about how everybody gets from where they were to where they are supposed to be. Which should be deconflicted by altitude until it isn’t.
Basically, a helicopter took off in a suburban area and the downdraft caused injury to someone in their garden by blowing a patio umbrella into their face. I was surprised the theoretical maximum downdraft speed was only 27mph; it appears in this case it was likely accelerated to faster speeds by the local terrain.
I also have to say that if I were the injured party, I would be disappointed by the report’s conclusion - essentially it amounts to “these things happen”. I would have expected a recommendation to pilots to be aware of the possibility of this sort of conflict and to try and plan their flightpath accordingly (which in this case would have involved taking off in a different direction). But maybe that’s just not feasible in most situations, and this was just a freak accident.
It depends. Helicopters can operate out of confined areas. In training, we spent a lesson operating out of a confined area, outside of the envelope. The instructor said, sometimes you have to operate outside of the envelope; it’s a calculated risk. Sporty’s Pilot Shop had a DVD called So You Want To Fly Helicopters where they operate out of a parking lot. They go into the risks, and describe the precautions/preparations they took before the shoot.