shoreham air show - bad news

[guest311]

good news is that all the injured that were admitted to hospital, apart from the pilot, are reported to have been discharged.

bad news is that Sussex Police say death toll may rise to 20.

I am assuming this is based on the number of people who are reported as being 'out of contact', and as time passes it seems less likely that there are other reasons for their silence.

a terrible tragedy that will have repercussions for some time.

on top of that, the weather is now bad, with quite heavy rain north of the downs, and most probably at the crash site too, which will make the investigators job even more difficult.

[NeMo]

why do they allow aerobatics over busy roads.

You might well ask why let cars drive on roads then. The risk of an aircraft causing an accident by briefly flying across a road is extremely small. The risk of a car causing an accident on a road at some point along its journey is very much greater.

On top of that cars are driven by people with a much lower degree of training compared to aircraft, and the people flying at airshows in particular tend to be expert pilots not beginners. Furthermore, mechanical failure is much less likely with aircraft than cars because the inspection of aircraft for airworthiness are more frequent (in terms of hours of use) and more stringent than the annual MOT inspection of cars.

It's always tragic to read about air accidents, I think because the people involved always seem to have been helpless to save themselves. It must be an horrific experience. But at the same time it's important to put things in perspective. Being inside a commercial aircraft is one of the safest places you can be, and the chances of being involved in an accident with a historic aircraft is extremely small not least because these aircraft fly very few hours per year.

What we don't need is a knee-jerk response from government about banning airshows or something along those lines as politicians try to "cash in" on the concern we all justifiably feel towards those who were unfortunately caught up in the Shoreham events.

Cheers, NeMo

[guest311]

very well put 

[Geoff]

...why do they allow aerobatics over busy roads.

Beacuase the display needs a couple of miles each end of the runway/display area for the aircraft to manoeuvre and there aren't many accessible airfields that aren't within a couple of miles of a busy road.

Then maybe these displays need to be restricted to seaside towns where the planes are over the sea.

Caz I am so sorry to hear about your friends brother and his friend his missing my thoughts go out to all the families that have someone missing.

[Sprintex]

What we don't need is a knee-jerk response from government about banning airshows or something along those lines

Which knowing this country is exactly what will happen! Not a ban as such, but so many new rules and regulations that it won't be worth the hassle or expense putting a show on in the first place Sorry Geoff but your suggestion of "seaside only" is precisely the type of knee-jerk reaction we DON'T need

It's a tragic accident and no more.

Paul

[MikeDunn]

I was writing pretty much the same just now, but Sprintex' post managed to wipe mine out 

Geoff, that kind of reaction would wipe out displays such as the Flying Legends that Duxford do every year; and others too, Cosford as another example, or Farnborough (although the Govt would no doubt explicitly exclude the latter, given how many £billions come in that way - one rule for the companies, another for the enthusiasts ...).  It's the last thing we need.

But - given the proximity of this show to the sea, I have wondered why it wasn't held over water, with the airfield used as the start/end point & also for the stalls etc ?

[Geoff]

Maybe a knee Jerk reaction but when I heard this guy on Sky news saying there are lots of accidents on roads and you have to expect an accident every time you get in your car it wound me up some Aviation expert he was.

Yes maybe you are right I di give a Kneejerk reaction but I think we all do at some point, maybe the pilots need checking over plus the aircraft by someone before they do the stunts, but sorry if you thought I spoke out of turn.

[guest311]

let us take a serious look at what is being suggested by some people .....

airshows shouldn't take place near roads ?

vintage aircraft shouldn't be allowed to fly ?

air displays should only take place over the sea /

you would be very hard pushed to find an airfield/airport that doesn't have a road near it.

think Southampton airport, just over the fence from the M27.

let alone Gatwick [M23] Heathrow [M25 / M4] the list goes on.

thousands of air movements, be they at displays or routine flights, land and take off every day across roads without incident. they have to due to the infrastructure.

this appears to have been a terrible ACCIDENT, and no more. if you ban, or constrain, air shows as a result, where do the knee jerkers stop ?

a few years ago IIRC an aircraft crashed on the M1 while on approach to an airport in the midlands.

do you close the airport ?? where do you stop ?

it is a terrible fact of life that accidents happen, every day, and they have often horrendous results.

however I do not believe that stopping everything that has resulted from an accident is the answer.

investigate, and where the reasons can be ascertained, then things can sometimes be done to mitigate them.

but there will always be accidents, and that is a fact of life whether it's an aircraft at an airshow, a ship at sea, an aircraft on a scheduled flight, a hang glider or parachutist, a rock climber, a horse rider ..... the list is never ending.

things can be made safer, but there will always be accidents.

sorry for going on.

[MikeDunn]

Well, to be brutally honest : every day there are numerous car accidents, lots of injuries, and a number of fatalities.  And that's just in this country.

That's not true with aircraft; it's just that (passenger aircraft especially) the numbers can be a lot more in one incident   

As to checking the pilots & aircraft - do you get checked out every time you use a car ?  Do you check the car out ?  This does happen on aircraft ... OK, pilots don't get fully checked every time - but they have to pass a stringent physical every year.  Can you imagine the reaction if that was brought in on all car drivers, say by making the driving test a yearly occurance ?  And, like locomotives, the aircraft need to pass inspection before they take to the air, more so when they are in displays like this (and please - no flippant remarks, people, about locomotives not taking to the air ...  ).

It's a shocking accident; but when you consider the figures it's more shocking that road safety is not given this level of attention ...

As it happens, I know someone (from work) who lives down that area; I've not heard from him today, but I know his family were planning a few days away late last week/early this week.  I'm hoping that they didn't change their minds & stayed close to home, attending this ... I'll know more tomorrow when he's due back.

[NeMo]

Yes maybe you are right I di give a Kneejerk reaction but I think we all do at some point, maybe the pilots need checking over plus the aircraft by someone before they do the stunts, but sorry if you thought I spoke out of turn.

Not out of turn at all. And yes, absolutely the aircraft should (and almost certainly was) checked by the pilot before it took off, and it would have had a serious of airworthiness exams across its entire operating life at very regular intervals. Unlike a car, which gets examined once a year regardless of how much its used, an aircraft is checked after specific hours of flying time. There's a series of exams, A, B, C and D exams, and these are steadily more detailed. This is on top of the standard checks pilots are expected to do before they take off.

Before you fly at an airshow you'll have to present a whole bunch of paperwork that demonstrates that the aircraft is safe and you have all the necessary skills. This isn't like a classic car show where someone just turns up with their Morris Minor and parks it on the lawn.

It will be interesting to see what happened with the Hawker Hunter. There is an argument for saying that old aircraft need to be handled with discretion care when it comes to airworthiness, but once the airframe is life expired, it stays on the ground unless the aircraft can be substantially rebuilt with a new airframe (in which case is it more a replica than an original aircraft). The guys who organise airshows take their job very seriously, and civil aviation officials can't be negotiated with. If they say an aircraft is not airworthy, it's stays on the ground. End of story.

Catastrophic accidents happen even with brand new aircraft. Bad luck, a poorly manufactured component that failed, some external distraction or damage to the aircraft occurred... we just don't know yet. The level of investigation makes anything we do with road accidents look like amateur hour. Seriously, there will be some very, very detailed analysis going on now, and once the dust has settled the engineers and officials will hopefully be able to explain what went wrong (and if necessary, make recommendations).

What we don't need is politicians with precisely zero understand of aviation or engineering sticking their noses into the situation. As in almost all situations of crisis, the best thing politicians can do is NOTHING and let the trained professionals get on with it.

Cheers, NeMo

[guest311]

"the best thing politicians can do is NOTHING and let the trained professionals get on with it."

well said.

especially about the 'trained professionals' rather than the 'experts' who are already coming out of the woodwork with their 'expert opinions' .

one was on the news earlier saying how the pilot obviously decided to land on the road rather than risk crashing on the airfield.

this in spite of clear photos showing he was crossing the road and heading towards the airfield, which then has a substantial clear area north of the runway, where he could have landed and been closer to the airfield emergency services.

all this sort of speculation does not help, and just causes even more misery.

IMHO this needs to be left as a terrible accident, and the expert crash investigators left to do their work rather than lots of people guessing, and getting their 10 seconds of fame on TV regardless of how much agony they cause.

rant over 

[MikeDunn]

One thing that annoys me more than these (in)expert 'talking heads' is the way the news teams simply must ask bloody stupid & insensitive questions - as well as the rush to get live coverage from (as near as possible to) the site of the incident in question; add in the near-constant barrage from that reporter for the next 8 hours at least ... 

I really think that 24-hour news is a bane, not a blessing ...  There just isn't enough news for it to be a constant programme !  Bring back the days when news really was news, and not some stuck-up knickerless actress with delusions of grandeur parading around ... to be replaced only when there's a tragedy like this ...

(whoops, I guess this belongs to the Angry Thread !!!  )

[Caz]

Great news, he's made contact so panic over.      

[MikeDunn]

 

Not realise the family was panicking, or ... ?

[MalcolmInN]

> "Bring back the days when news really was news, "

Yep, with you 100%, and we all? have heard that clip (was it from 2LO or some other early form of Beeb ?), when the news reader announced that "today there is no news"

>"knickerless actress"

I truss you have evidence to support this ?

> "(whoops, I guess this belongs to the Angry Thread !!! 

Yer not wrong there