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Hunter crashes at Shoreham


sinnerboy

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I'm a bit confused here - two of my photos are of the aircraft vertical completely showing the underside. I'll nip off and have look at the video - my tablet doesn't want to do videos at the moment!

Jim

I believe the manoeuvre is called a quarter clover as described here

" A quarter-clover is harder to describe. It's a loop with a twist a quarter of the way through. This means that the Red Arrows formation will start flying horizontal, straight and level, and then pull up as if starting a loop. As the aircraft reach vertical (i.e. pointing straight up), the team then twist the formation a quarter of a turn and then continue the loop at 90 degrees to the way they started."

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I think the CAA response is quite reasonable in the circumstances. When people talk about no public fatalities at an airshow in the uk since 1952 it does seem that they are diminishing the magnitude of this accident. Part of the outcry is that the fatalities in this case were not attendees of the show. When one goes to motor racing there are signs to say it is a dangerous activity and that spectators are there at their own risk, so spctators buy into this. It is probably the same at airshows-I haven't noticed, but I still go and have done since I was a boy in the 60s. People travelling on a public highway should not be put at risk by an airshow, which is basically entertainment for others.

Van

Further to your comments. I agree also the CAA response can be regarded as reasonable. If it is vague it's likely because they themselves don't know what the final response is until a thorough investigation has been carried out. Even more so if there have been no fatalities since 1952 and to suddenly have all that change in 2015. The tragedy is more poignant considering as you've mentioned the fatalities were people going about their daily business and not attendees of the air show.

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The CAA position is absolutely correct in my opinion. Tragically we are dealing with a downed aircraft and multiple casualties on the ground. The correct thing to do is to curtail and restrict the activity that lead to the accident until the relevant investigatory authority determines the cause of the accident and proscribes what measures require to be taken to ensure there is no repitition. .

The problem is that you can never ensure that there is no repetition, only minimize the risk to an acceptable or tolerable level. Suppose that there had been no traffic lights in that location, would that have reduced the number of casualties because traffic would not have been backed up? Do you restrict manoeuvres and aerobatics where there are busy roads within a mile of the airfield boundary? Or do you close all the roads for the duration of the show? What is the tolerable level of risk? What if it had been a piston fighter that had hit a coach with 40 or so passengers?

It appears that there were a number of spectators by the roadside and at most airshows you can see numbers of them outside the airfield boundary. Does the organiser have to sterilise a one mile radius from the airfield boundary of all groups of spectators? How else do they manage the risk?

I suspect that this accident will mark a watershed in the regulation of airshows in the UK if only because it will encourage exactly these types of question and ultimately someone has to sign off that they have accepted the risk over a multitude of items that are outside their control and the only way to do that is to restrict those things that you do have control over.

Peter

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Fair points Peter

What I was referring to though was not so much that we can always avoid risk to persons on the ground (at airshows or otherwise) as we can't. It was more that the investigators find out what it was that caused the accident and implement measures to prevent a similar accident from the same cause in future

Eg when an aircraft crashes and it's a component failure we modify the design to ensure that the component never fails in the same way again. If it's pilot error we modify training and so on

What you say is true. Being in a world where aircraft fly exposes us all to a degree of risk in one way or another. Living in the Scottish Borders I know that very well from history. It's using our skills to make sure we learn from each accident to ensure that it will not happen in the same way again at least.

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Don't tell me to take a look at what I'm typing. Many crashes recently and by luck nobody killed until today. Maybe if everything a plane crashed at an airshow the same defensive attitude was not present and people seriously looked at the issues this would not have happened. It's not an accident it was bound to happen. Because people enjoy looking at old aircraft perform aerobatics 7 people died. Fact. In this thread people have said shame about loss of an old aircraft and i have to think before I type.

Well I'm a commercial pilot and I take calculated risks every time I go to work. So do you every time you get out of bed in the morning and drive to work. Every instrument approach I make in bad weather is a combination of risk and skill especially when storms are around. By "luck" you haven't been killed in a random "incident" and by "luck" neither have I. A double engine failure in poor weather during an approach would pretty much guarantee the end of my life and all of my passengers (thank goodness the odds of that are astonishingly low).

The idea that you can have zero fatalities in such things as aviation and on the roads is ludicrous!

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Only from watching 2 videos of the approach i thought he had approached on the B axis and then done a ' quarter clover' manouver to end up on the A axis of the display,

Like i said, i havent watched it many times or with any great accuracy and am completely unfamiliar with shorehams layout .the photo/overlay/arrow thing above on this page looks rather inaccurate to me from what little ive seen

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A simple trawl across Google assures me that the AAIB (Armchair Amateurs Internet Baloney) investigation is well on the case.

It's very difficult for anyone with any interest in such matters to refrain from speculation, and even harder for the aforementioned silly season media frenzy to show any imagination, professionalism, restraint or taste, but it would really help us all to just leave it alone until the real professionals have released the relevant information.

As for the surprise expressed at the CAA's decision, those of us who have constant differences with this overtly political organisation have no such feelings. Their knee-jerk response to volcanic ash and snow-covered runways are just two of the more egregious interventions which smelled more of lawsuit avoidance rather than aviation safety.

Edited by Brokenedge
Swearing removed. You've been here long enough to know the rules.
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I'd agree with some of that , Al. It seems to speak to a very human desire for an explanation for traumatic events and an assurance that we personally could not have done something to have prevented it happening. What I (and it seems others here too) find frustrating is the disregard by journalists for the facts and evidence (much of which cannot be know at this point) in pursuit of a sensationalist, profiteering agenda. I'd hope that even in this age of smart phones we the public know that it serves no purpose to gawp at the human tragedy and I'd rather it wasn't served up on the front pages.

However, I also don't think that it is realistic to expect everyone to know what arrangements already exist to minimise the risk of air accidents so to my mind the inevitable protestations of "there should be tests for pilots!", "there should be rules about how/where a display should be flown!", "reckless stunts should be outlawed" etc. should be met with enlightenment and rebuttal from those who know better. To leave them unchallenged seems to me to be accepting the ways of the witch-burning mob.

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An absolutely tragic accident, and real people are now gone.

While the people who have suffered a loss will never be reconciled with aviation, I would like to put some contexed to the event.

during the 65 years since a member of the public was killed at an aviation event, upwards of 5500 building workers have died just doing a job and 6 million brittans have died of direct smoking effects, not much of a call to ban them.

my point is that they are not a news worthy events ,non the less, as tragic.

now that the campaign against aviation, CAA, have banned certain aspects of air display it wont be long before the air show industry in the uk fades away. it is already a shadow of what it was 20 years ago ,as regards the flying at these events, lacklustre comes to mind.

and before any one jumps on my opinions not one member of the public died in the seventies and eighties .

knee jerk reactions, and every uninformed comment from celebrity pundits. and media know nothings will not resolve any thing.

best stop now .

be safe in your endevours

greycap

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I have held back from commenting here so far because I have nothing constructive to add to the debate. My sympathies of course go out to the relatives of the bereaved, those injured and to anyone traumatised by witnessing this horrific tragedy.

I will keep my contempt for certain elements of the media, grabbing a headline to make some sales to myself as I would certainly be put in the cooler otherwise.

Rest in peace to those who died and a speedy and full recovery to the injured.

Trevor

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I see The Sun is taking its usual restrained approach:

As up to 20 die on road we say... too little, too late

SUN SAYS: Bosses FINALLY restrict old jets

:wall:

Yes that article appears to be completely ill informed and they seemed to have come to a conclusion of what caused the accident - the fact that the aircraft was old! Papers should be there to tell the facts not to give their opinions on things and especially things that they seem to know nothing about. Edited by Tbolt
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No they didn't, but they did get rid of fences, which was the root cause of the deaths at Hillsborough. In a similar way they have tried to remove what they regard as the cause without taking away the event altogether,

Yes, also the Taylor report recommended all seater stadiums and they did try to introduce identity cards for football fans after Hysel. Football changed beyond recognition after these tragedies, Hillsborough was a disaster waiting to happen, I was personally involved in some very near misses at football in the 80's.

I can understand the CAA's decision, its easy to say with hindsight that flying fast jets over semi urban areas seems risky and this terrible tragedy has brought this to light, it just cant happen again, ever.

I grew up with seeing Hunters in the sky every day, I love the aircraft and have love seeing it fly, but if it were the choice of never seeing one in the air again and having to see the images of this crash again I know what i'd chose. Hopefully they will fly again even if they just do low risk displays, but for now our thought must be for the people caught up in this nightmare.

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Quite a bit of comment doing the rounds doesn't really face up to the non-negotiable physics of air safety.

The reason that the CAA has suspended aerobatic displays in jets is because the scope for damage is much greater than with smaller, slower, lighter types. All aviation regulation has always been based on the reality that the heavier, the faster, the more complex an aircraft, the more heavily regulated its design, operation, maintenance and crewing need to be.

That's because the risks for bystanders on the ground are not the same for an SE5a or Tiger Moth accident as for a Hunter accident, and that's a question of arithmetic rather than opinion.

Even comparing a Hunter with a high-performance piston fighter like a Bearcat as someone did a few pages back, the inescapable fact is that a Hunter accident is going to hit whatever it hits with approximately 5x the kinetic energy of a Bearcat suffering a similar accident, and will be carrying somewhere between two and three times the quantity of fuel. In broad terms it will do 5x the amount of damage to anything it hits.

Hunter: empty weight approx 12500 lb, display weight approx 18,000 lb

Bearcat: empty weight 7000 lb, display weight approx 8000 lb

Hunter loop entry / exit speed circa 450 kt. Bearcat loop entry/exit speed circa 300 kt.

Kinetic energy varies with mass and the square of the speed. Speed factor comparing the two types is 1.5 squared, which is 2.25. Display weight factor is also about 2.25 greater for the Hunter. Multiply the two together (2.25 x 2.25)and the kinetic energy difference is 5.06x greater for the Hunter.

That, in a nutshell, is why the CAA has suspended aerobatic displays for jets and not for aerobatic piston engined types, pending the accident investigation, root cause analysis and development of subsequent policy recommendations. In doing so it has protected the operability of the majority of air display operations for the time being.

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I see The Sun is taking its usual restrained approach:

As up to 20 die on road we say... too little, too late

SUN SAYS: Bosses FINALLY restrict old jets

:wall:

Must admit I'm driven to near screaming (i.e. writing back to these message boards with some sort of comment, but I suppose only madness lies on that route) that vintage aircraft don't do "stunts". Kids on scooters and skateboards do "stunts", but not experienced pilots. I thought the pilot was simply positioning himself for a high-speed and dramatic pass rather than aerobatting as such. (That's another one; gymnasts do acrobatics, aircraft do aerobatics.)

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I also note the Mail dredged up an old fool who has described Andy Hill as a lunatic and a show off. That from an ex RAF Hunter pilot. He really ought to know better and it's a disgrace for him to comment like that when it's far from clear what happened to cause this.

Then there's the Red Arrows thing. I'm surprised they haven't clarified the reason why Reds haven't displayed there and have allowed the press to imply that display flying is dangerous around Shoreham. People have to remember the Red Arrows is a nine ship display team carrying out a very high energy display over quite a wide area. Their requirements are quite different to a singleton jet.

It's particularly irritating when people involved in flying make it worse by saying something idiotic or worse say nothing in the face of moronic reporting.

As for the CAA, well they had no choice. They have to be seen to act and in the circumstances with the rather hysterical coverage. I would have thought they were restrained in their actions. They really had to ground all the Hunters and restrict jet displays until some clarity is to be had.

But even the police seem to have been caught up in the storm. Their figure of a possible 20 dead seems exaggerated. It seems to imply people have simply vanished without trace because there have been rescuers all over the site in the last couple of days. Obviously they are basing this number on calls they received from worried relatives. I think they'll be rowing back on that figure soon.

Someone on this thread mentioned the issue of pilot medicals. Clearly he has no idea of what's involved. But I do having do repeat my class one medical yearly as I'm in the same age range as the pilot. Believe me it's thorough and I have had mine temporarily suspended a couple of times for further investigation. Always a nerve wracking moment. My high blood pressure was detected during one medical. Which of course is a good thing. This of course doesn't mean the medical can catch everything. But the relative lack of incidents of pilots becoming incapacitated tells how effective the system is.

I just wish people would wait at least for the initial report. No one knows what happened yet!

One other thing occurs to me. Whatever else happens, that's the last Shoreham airshow.

Edited by noelh
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As a retired rail accident and incident investigator, trained in root cause analysis, risk assessment and a former TOLO, I can perfectly understand the CAAs response to the Shoreham tragedy. Most regulation/restriction tends to be reactive rather than proactive. One of my favourite anecdotes...

In the Salisbury rail crash of 1 July 1906, a LSWR boat train from Plymouth's Friary railway station to London Waterloo station failed to navigate a very sharp curve at the eastern end of Salisbury railway station. The curve had a speed limit of 30 mph, but the express had been travelling at more than 70 mph. The train was completely derailed, and smashed into a milk train and a light engine, killing 28 people.

The accident occurred at the same time as a short cut of the rival Great Western Railway was opening, and it was claimed that the driver of the crashed train was trying to show that his railway was capable of competitive speeds. It was also rumoured that passengers – mostly rich New Yorkers travelling to London from the transatlantic port at Plymouth – had bribed the driver to run the train as fast as possible, but there was not any evidence of this, and if anything the train had lost time earlier. Conversely, it was stated that drivers often ran through Salisbury very fast on these trains to "get a run" at the following hill. The engine was a new LSWR L12 class 4-4-0 with a higher centre of gravity than the earlier T9 class. The most likely cause of the accident is that the driver simply did not realise the level of risk he was running, particularly as this was the first occasion on which he had taken a non-stopping train through Salisbury. Also, steam locomotives at this time, and for half a century afterwards, were not fitted with speedometers.

As a result of the crash, all trains were required to stop at Salisbury station from that point onwards (the boat train at the time had no passenger stops from Plymouth to London Waterloo, although locomotives were changed at Templecombe). The speed limit on the curve east of Salisbury was also reduced to 15 mph, a limit still effective today.

The last few words sum things up for me; despite improvements in rail safety in over 100 years, the speed limit still applies.

Of course, it costs money for investigations, which probably accounts for why things aren't reviewed. We tend to work to the maxim "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." but these investigations are often the only times that incidents such as this are properly reviewed.

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The Shoreham airshow V The Red Arrows is the size of the airfield,too small among other concerns.

This is a cut n paste from the Telegraph

The Royal Air Force display team has declined requests to appear at the show, even though it is organised by the Royal Air Forces Association, because the surrounding area is too built up, with insufficient room for aircraft to crash-land in an emergency.

One former air show promoter said the Red Arrows regarded the site as dangerous because “any accident would be a disaster there – there is nowhere for them to put a plane down without killing someone”.

A former Red Arrows pilot said the team could not perform at Shoreham because its display could not be varied and would take the aircraft over built-up areas.

Edited by bzn20
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By the very nature of their display designs, optimised for a large formation which subdivides into simultaneous use of a core formation with independent elements, the Reds do cover a LOT of ground in their displays, and those displays have to be very highly rehearsed into a relatively small number of set-menu variations for different weather conditions etc.

Given that Shoreham is embedded in built-up areas to the east and west I can entirely understand why a high speed large formation team would find it a location onto which it could not feel happy overlaying one of its big set-piece displays.

Solo displays can in principle be much more compact simply because you aren't having to accommodate the speed and radius differences between guys on the inside and outside, and vertical extremities of the formation, and you have inherently greater flexibility over your display design. So while the Reds' policy is always of interest I don't consider it as a direct read-across from the Reds policy to what it is reasonable to plan in a solo display of a similar aircraft type. The RAF's own Hawk solo displays cover a lot less real estate than the Reds, for example.

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Refering to the Daily Mail graphic on the previous page...That Loop manoeuvre was at no time inside the airfield.

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Also IIRC from the news interviw last night , the ban on display manouvers for jets is temporary, not permenant

Don't you believe it. I hate to be a prophet of doom, and at the risk of sounding personal, but if you honestly think that this restriction will be lifted at some time in the future, no matter what the various investigations and inquests recommend, then sadly you are deluding yourself. And if you don't believe that there will be more restrictions to come, then you really need a reality check.

Airshows as we know them are over. Period. What the regulators don't prevent the insurance companies surely will. To say nothing of crusading journos, NIMBYs and MPs wanting to make a name for themselves. As an example, there is already a local group who are vocal in their opposition to the Farnborough Airshow every time it comes around; you can be sure they will have a much louder voice next year, and with much more public support. I don't envy the show organisers.

And even without any new restrictions, as noelh says, we've seen the last airshow at Shoreham

Edited by T7 Models
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