NovemberEcho
Dergs favorite member
That was the video I was talking about several posts up like a month ago. Even if it did hit something right then, with that trajectory and speed I don’t think the outcome was altered.
Dallas Executive Mid-Air / B-17 - P-63
- Thread starter melax
- Start date
Indeed. Unless that P-63 hit a hovering concrete wall that appeared of nowhere, its speed, weight and trajectory were not going to be altered impacting something that would be an airborne speed bump at best. So far as the descent he was in, with the clearance the air boss had given to descend, it seems that he was doing so having not fully cleared his flight path.
A lot of people are making a big deal about the air boss clearing the fighters into the bombers altitude block, and legitimate questions on whether he was qualified/competent to be holding that position . Those are secondary and tertiary “factor(s) discovered, but not causal” items of information. Regardless of him giving that (or any) clearance to any aircraft on the radio, it’s incumbent on the pilots to clear their flight path and ensure that any clearance/instruction/request can be complied with safely at the time it’s given. Otherwise, do not comply with it until certain where all the other players…..known players….,are. At the end of the day, the pilots are flying the planes, they aren’t being flown remotely by the air boss.
"There were no altitude deconflictions briefed before the flight or while the airplanes were in the air."
Maybe I'm missing something but it seems that's 'nough said. In some loose formations, 500 feet laterally is still considered, you know, in formation.
500 ft laterally is not a wide margin, 'specially when moving fast and/or maneuvering and/or trying to catch up from a sucked position. Heck, I had a few guys try to tell me that a 500ft lateral offset breaking out of 200ft mins is "a position from which to make a normal landing".
500 feet at 250kts is closed in 1 second.
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Lawman
Well-Known Member
It’s been my experience that most -2’s seem to think that as well…
“2 say Posit gawd dammit!”
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
There’s a lot of holes in the Swiss cheese here. The Air Boss and the bad plan is just a secondary part of it. Much like a VFR tower, the Air Boss is responsible for sequencing, not separation. His sequencing and plan was a jumbled mess indeed, and I don’t know how much of a briefed plan there was. The pilots are still responsible for separation while VMC, and are expected to be experienced enough in formation ops to know what can and cannot be done safely, and to call knock it off……a KEY phrase in formation work, when things aren’t looking or feeling right, or the plan seems to be starting to break down. However, given the background of the pilot flying the P-63, I’m not confident of his depth of formation knowledge regarding roles and responsibilities, aside from many years of two planes going the same way on the same day, and coming from the background of being a CAL/UAL pilot and non-mil.
In terms of secondary contributing factors, the air boss does not seem to either have had a fully briefed plan, or perhaps wasn’t fully following it specifically. And there appears to be questions on the air boss’ qualifications and experience for holding that position in the first place. A big section of the huge Swiss cheese in this accident, that will have to be addressed.
ahw01
Well-Known Member
Need to stop calling them air bosses
I guess that’s just in the sense of the one single point running/organizing the show. Pilots still have their responsibilities to not hit anything in the air, when knowingly operating in close proximity to other aircraft that are part of their overalll show. And to know when to call a knock it off if the plan appears to be breaking down or comms are breaking down.
ahw01
Well-Known Member
Flight Display Controller? You should have some ATC awareness to do it. Not just a pair of binocs.
Springer
Well-Known Member
Here is the FAA's audio:
https://www.faa.gov/foia/electronic_rea ... irshow-caf
In Juan's post the audio appears to be edited (with or without his knowledge) with no pauses between transmissions.
From someone (not me) that flew in the show, this was not the Air Boss's first rodeo.
https://www.faa.gov/foia/electronic_rea ... irshow-caf
In Juan's post the audio appears to be edited (with or without his knowledge) with no pauses between transmissions.
From someone (not me) that flew in the show, this was not the Air Boss's first rodeo.
///AMG
Well-Known Member
I'm not in the "biz", though I have friends who are (at the very young end of the spectrum). My personal opinion.......would you ever trust ATC to be infallible? Same goes for the big guy in the stands. If you are ever in formation without being able to see that formation, it is a bigger barn burner than any other aircraft emergency. Nothing will kill you deader any faster than that. Shudders of a memory of losing sight of my wingman in the target area at 500AGL and seeing the A/A TACAN readout go to 0.0.......in the debrief, he said "oh dude, I was right below you". This being with both of us at a continuous 5-6 G trying to evade the "smoky SAM"s that were being shot at us (a training missile/aid). He was a good pilot, that is for sure. I was a very young flight lead and trusted him to be a good wingman (he was actually my evaluator for that sortie). Which really doesn't prove my point other than the fact that we were less than a second from hitting each other for a good 30 seconds, during really heavy maneuvering while being distracted by things outside of the formation, which was mitigated by good wingmanship. At the end of the day, Mike is right here.
ahw01
Well-Known Member
Just listening, whereabouts in the stream is it
inigo88
Composite-lover
I have a contrary opinion. I have no first hand air boss experience, but I’ve listened to a lot of them at air shows on scanners (including the big ones like OSH, a couple Red Bull Air Races, etc) so I’m not formulating this opinion from a position of complete ignorance to the subject.
Air Boss styles vary widely, because the position is part event planner, part air traffic controller. There are some who are very scripted and fall back on the briefing, just focusing on getting the correct aircraft to and from pre-established holds into show center at the right time purely through sequencing (“hold here”, “leave the hold, go here”) without playing an active role in separation other than to point out other traffic. Then there are others who are super hands on with control instructions like a tower controller (“fly this heading”, “make a left 90 then a right 180”, “maintain this altitude” etc) as was the case here.
IMHO (and it doesn’t really change whether the time is compressed in the YouTube video or not) he was trying to do too many things at once - controlling airborne aircraft like a tower controller, controlling the runway movement areas like a tower controller, managing the pyro guy on the ground and being overall event planner. That’s too many hats for one guy to be wearing.
There are many red flags in the recording, for example when the fighters and bombers start reading stuff back in confused tones of voice, asking for clarification and repeats of instructions, and he’s like don’t worry guys I have SA and am executing a master plan. These are all little context clues of what they briefed on the ground not being adequate and the situation in the air starting to diverge from what was briefed. Once people started sounding confused on the radio and started losing SA they should have “knocked it off” and hit the reset button until everyone was on the same page again. And nevermind the eventual control instruction he gave that put the two opposing formation flights belly to belly and out of visual with each other.
I’m definitely not a Juan fanboy but I think he had some real valid points on this one.
Juan Bincorolio is Dan Gryder minus the criminal record.
The air boss was definitely a problem, but not the factor that put two planes into one another. Like a VFR tower, his only gig is to sequence his aircraft; he has no legit means to ensure separation of aircraft other than pre briefed sectors/blocks. While his managing style was indeed jumbled, likely because of what you correctly stated as working beyond the span of control that he could legitimately maintain…..otherwise known as micromanaging; the pilots held the ultimate responsibility to follow the rules of the road regarding overtaking aircraft, as well as the most basic of formation responsibilities, which I don’t think the Walter Mitty fighter pilot wannabes understand in any depth beyond planes being close to one another.
When that was going to crap, a knock it off was indeed the call to make. At a minimum, do not leave your altitude block without knowing where all the players are. There’s only about 7 or 8 of them, and they’re all flying a predictable flight path at a predictable altitude!. All of them being known players. This isn’t some dogfight with 6 planes all doing their own thing while maneuvering.
The physical cause of the collision was failing to clear one’s flight path….the P-63 running over the B-17. Failing to maintain SA on where the formation players were. Why that happened, we may never know. Contributing to that, was the apparent lack of a plan by the air boss, the air boss’s controlling style, and his failure to recognize when he himself was getting task saturated.
At the end of the day, the Air Boss was not physically flying the P-63, or any other aircraft. So he’s not responsible for where the flight path of that aircraft goes, the pilot is. That is what Juan is too ignorant and inexperienced, to understand. The air boss foul up is true; but it’s a contributing factor at best.
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Murdoughnut
Well sized member
I had to block his videos - got tired of clicking on a screen image of some incident and then immediately getting some old dude filming a selfie.
The guy that does the AOPA Safety Institute videos is solid, though.
Lawsuits starting. Family of one of the B-17 pilots, a retired AA pilot, against CAF as the airshow organizer.
Surprised it took that long.
This kind of stuff annoys me. To me it fits into the same box with D-bagBros who go out and do EXTREME Brawndo Adventures! Then, typically inevitably, things go south and the public gets a several million dollar bill for SAR services and/or the cleanup on isle 13.
Adventure is really only adventure if there is no rescue available. For you er, libertairservatives, who are about to unleash upon me... take a moment. Think about Dueling. The Honor of Adventure and Dueling must be underpinned with the acceptance of existential risk in opposition to one's manifest competence.
Flying old war birds is kinda the same.
You buys yer ticket and you take yer chances. It's not like any of the old timers involved in antique aviation don't know their operations are severely, er, sub-optimized, eh?
But hey! All them lawyers, courts, insurance personnel, and associated expenditures accrue directly to the top and bottom lines of our revered GDP! So, we've got THAT going for us. (Hint: There is no top or bottom to GDP. GDP is just a line, really.)
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knot4u
Repeat Offender
Have you ever witnessed an airplane crash with no survivors?
"Relevance, your Honor." ??
Also, just from a practical standpoint, what would be the point of answering that?
I answer yes, you're gonna say something "nice" about me.
I answer no, you're gonna say something "nice" about me.