And unexpectedly this was an Airbus A330 and not a Boeing.
You’re not supposed to take it with you.
Honest, Ms. Flight Attendant, I thought that was the hall pass!
Some cool aviation-themed ties!:
I knew Rob fairly well. He trained me in aerobatics and we kept in touch sporadically over the years. As close to a “natural” as I’ve ever seen. Incredibly skillful pilot and an excellent instructor.
For years whenever there was an airshow crash I would think, “Please don’t be Rob… Please don’t be Rob…” Well, today’s the day. Goddammit. RIP, my friend. I’m honored to have your signature in my logbook.
Damn. Sorry to hear that.
What plane did he instruct you in?
Before he was a full time air show pilot, Rob had a flight school in Nashua, NH specializing in aerobatics. He taught a week-long course in a Super Decathlon, gave you a tail wheel endorsement and even let you solo it afterward. I was lucky to work with him.
There are is some initial reports that the wing separated on Rob Holland’s custom made experimental aircraft and he was too low to parachute out.
It apparently happened once before to the same type aircraft:
Just watched the latest Accident Case Study. I’ve seen a few of these where an non-instrumented pilot flies from VFR to IFR. Suppose this happens, what should the pilot do?
Medevac helicopter crashes during training exercise, three injured. Witnesses say the blades may have clipped tree branches on takeoff.
https://fox2now.com/news/illinois/helicopter-training-crash-in-illinois-crews-on-scene-response/
As am I. My condolences, LL.
I’ve never seen this disclaimer in an article before -
The way I interpret this, they are saying the AI wrote the article with the facts they gathered. Atleast they’re honest…
That sort of failure seems more likely than pilot error. Rob would have been dead long ago if he had been careless.
Ouch. Sorry to hear about Holland.
I’ve written before about I guy I used to fly with at the airline who’d led a 3-plane aerobatic team back in the 80s or 90s. He eventually quit that and went back to airlining full time.
His comment was that everybody scares themselves once in awhile. The trick is to recognize when you’ve scared yourself enough times. Anyone who stays in the biz long enough dies in their airplane. The only way to survive is to quit before the n+1th scare. For an n that only you can judge.
My other brush with aerobatic fame was attending 767 requal school with a guy who had been a Red Bull Air Race pilot. We had both flown the 767 before, him far more than me. So the school was a cakewalk & we did a lot of screwing around. Such fun.
Anyhow, he had quit that Red Bull gig as it was slowly getting crazier and crazier out there as management wanted ever greater spectacles and new records every season. He’d scared himself enough. But …
He also did a lot of aerobatics & high perf stuff on the side. Had gotten himself an L-39 jet and was trying to set up a jet racing league. Then the engine quit just after takeoff on an ordinary passenger demo ride and they pancaked in with about 90 degrees of bank and the fireball eventually slid to a stop alongside the runway. Both killed of course.
He was smart, resourceful, super skilled, and a real natural. And a nice guy to boot; not snooty at all. He’s dead and I’m not. Sometimes skill is what gets you into trouble. Not by cockiness of the moment, but by something like losing sight of your total lifetime cumulative dose of risk.
RIP both of you.
Nice, a 2-for. And from someone of his skill level.
A couple of thoughts:
-
2 aerobatic accidents with wing separation doesn’t inspire confidence in this plane. Maybe a grounding and inspection is in order.
-
Would a ballistic chute work for aerobatic planes? I know it wouldn’t help for some of the routines at near ground level but it might above 100 ft. I remember Sean Tucker saying that Bob Hoover advised him against some of his extremely low passes.
Here’s the accident report (as a pdf) for a previous wing loss accident in an MX2 back in 2015. Interesting read. Seems one of the support brackets that hold the engine mounts failed, the other three brackets then failed in overload, the engine departed the airframe, the sudden CG shift resulted in a pitch up that caused the wing to fail in overload. The pilot got out and parachuted to safety.
We’ve talked about ballistic chutes before. They’re not a panacea. The POHs for the lightplanes that have them suggest your success rate is far better if straight and level and unaccelerated and above 5000 AGL when you pull the handle. Which conditions describe zero percent of any aerobatic performance.
Most structural failures result in the airplane tumbling at fairly high RPM. Which pretty well ensures entanglement between the fuselage and cable as the parachute is being fired away from the aircraft and is then inflating. Back in the development era for ejection seats, one of the things they tried first was an ejectable parachute that would pull then the pilot from the cockpit. That idea foundered on the entanglement problem during chute inflation. Hence the seat to get the seat-pilot unit far enough away from the airplane before ejecting the chute and risers.
The other source of aerobatic performance crashes are bottoming out too low. By the time that’s obvious to the pilot, they’re very low and very close in time to impact. Probably not time to notice the mistake, make the decision, reach for, then pull the handle before the impact. Much less the several additional seconds it takes from handle pulled to full chute to fully decelerated airplane.