What makes people do completely mad things?

Lack of training resulting in lack of understanding, disregard of regulations, and lack of oversight. In 45+ hours, one may learn the skills to fly an aircraft, I’m not convinced that all pilots learn the judgement to fly unsupervised! I train newer pilots with hard deck exercises at altitude, and it’s even hard to get them to take seriously blowing through the agreed hard deck out of control, or unable to arrest their descent. It takes a few times to get the message through. By the way, water is about as hard as the ground, if you’re meeting while flying!

Lack of “wariness” – lack of seeing the world as a dangerous place, where you have to take responsibility for your own safety.
The “Just DO IT” idea. That the world you live in is designed to be safe for you. Frequently shown by mountain walking and shore accident reports.
If that is the video referred to in a recent NTSB report, they hit a wire.

His abrupt pull-up at low speed probably caused an accelerated stall, so he was already low on energy reserves. Add a classic low level skidding turn at low speed right after, and here’s the result.

Overconfidence or inexperience or both, peer group pressure, lack of aircraft performance, lack of understanding slow flight regime at high bank angles. Perhaps also lack of experience in very light aircraft, the energy dissipates fast after a jerky pull-up in a light, relatively high-drag airplane.

I´m not the one to throw a stone against the guys though….been there, done stupid things too. Fortunately we had people in our club setting us straight before killing ourselves or somebody else.

I’d be much too afraid to even attempt this, even if I were a way better pilot than I am. Shows once again that fear can be a lifesaving instinct.

What aircraft is it? What a miserable way to go.

I believe he could have saved his day easily if he had not attempted a u-turn. The aircraft will likely have gained a bit of speed after that pull up plus moderate left turn but the subsequent hard left bank at that speed was not possible to do without loss of altitude resp. loss of control. We do some , aah, low approaches, once in a while, after saying so explicitely on the radio but I don´t think that is very dangerous flying. The Yak has a good speed range from the low approach at 280 kmh and a loong pull up till speed bleeds off to 150kmh for easy rounding out long way before stall comes. In the crash clip above I guess there is not very much scope for that type of aircraft and that kind of flying – but the pilot should have known !

In the second youtube clip from minute 1:30 you can watch the horrible B 52 crash piloted by a well known personality in that air force. Please read the long comment below the YT clip by Brian Baird about previous stunts that the professional pilot did and all warnings were to no effect.
Vic

The aircraft in question is KP-2U Sova, a Czech ultralight, and the accident occurred near Abakan in Eastern Siberia. The Russian GA culture in general shows too many examples of cavalier attitude to safety, and in case of ultralights it only gets worse. This accident has been intensely discussed on the Russian aviation forum, and the consensus is more or less what @Pilot_DAR said.