Where was the fire service

Although the delay in the attendance of the emergency services is appalling, I suspect that the pilot was already dead by the time the aeroplane came to a stop. The inaction of the two people standing close by would suggest the same.

I doubt the pilot was dead, he is in a biplane. That top wing was protecting the cockpit. My guess was that he burned to death, what a way to go. The same thing happened in south Africa a few years back, the pilot was fine but the fire trucks took too long to arrive and he burned to death.

That is a pretty horrendous video.

Of course, I have no information about the arrangements for fire service at that airshow. Thus, expectations could differ from possibilities. However, for those very few times I have done something in a plane for which I thought that a crash or fire was a higher than normal risk, I have prearranged coverage, time and place. I wonder if this pilot did that. In my opinion, what that pilot attempted was foolish in the extreme, and gives a bad name to aviation. He died, his family and friends feel horrible, people who took their kids for a fun day, had to explain an event that even they do not understand, and now some fire service personnel feel horrible too. I was pretty well turned off airshows when a pilot did something deliberate, announced, and fatal right in front of me at Oshkosh, it the ’80’s. And, my attendance at the show was ruined for the rest of day.

Perhaps the fire service could have anticipated better, I don’t know those details. It is a certainty that the pilot could have flown with very much less risk to himself, made a positive impression on the audience for his chosen pastime, and lived…