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Hunter crash at Shoreham

It appeared to be a pretty sloppy barrel role, but there is not really perspective in which to comment fairly. It is the problem with video clips. Again to quote above and with all the caveats in place, he was either blown into the crowd line, and decided to pull it, wisely. He crossed the crowd line, and again decided to minimize collateral damage, by pulling away. It was part of the routine, and there was actually nothing wrong with it. It was a crap camera angle, that skewed the overall picture. Things do go wrong, and the wise move is to safely pull out and go away. Easier said than done. Any crowd line infringement is reported quickly to the CAA directorate. They then investigate, and where necessary, restrict the pilots DA. They can then ask for an examiner to review the Authorization, review the routine, and again where necessary, ask the pilot to alter the routine. Low level aerobatics is not for everyone, and the wind, weather in general, all play a major part in how your display runs.

Fly safe. I want this thing to land l...
EGPF Glasgow

It is interesting looking at the video about the apparent dishing at the end. I thought it was quite noticeable and then wondered whether the camera angle had a significant impact. I thought it really difficult to judge and as both previous contributors have said there is so little perspective to use, and the quality of the videa is pretty poor as well, so I feel it is pretty inconclusive.

Fuji_Abound wrote:

There are plenty of commecial pilots who have been suspended or failed a sim. check at some point in their career that are still flying.

Maybe. But if you look at accidents that were caused by “human factors”, quite a few (e.g. Crossair 3597, Indian Ailines 605) had pilots at the controls who had failed previous checks or were known to had diffiulties in their training programmes.

EDDS - Stuttgart

Yes, I agree, but equally you dont hear about those who carried on to have “unblemished” careers.

Reading through the biographies of the ‘greats’ I’m always interested that a fair number failed checkrides at one point or another, or were considered only marginally competent during the initial stages of their training. I can’t quite dredge names from my memory at the moment, but if persistently poor pilots are a problem in aviation, then the ‘problem’ is letting them progress, rather than persecuting those who have successfully addressed whatever inadequacy led to a failed checkride at some point in time.

Slightly off topic but if you are talking about checkrides then the recent quality of new pilots coming through the system, with in many cases less than 1000 hours is poor, and most have problems passing checkrides of fail them completely. What seems to be missing with many of them is the realisation that they actually are not a good pilot regardless of how much extra sim time or money that is thrown at their training. Their manual flying skills are poor. Their EASA question bank bashing didn’t prepare them and is also a poor system, with many of them just learning the correct answer without knowing what it actually means.
If they scrape through and make it online the misplaced sense of entitlement seems to be carried with them that they feel they belong in the left seat within two months. I blame the current quality of the CRM courses for most of it, although of course CRM is a good idea if taught correctly.

As for this accident well these aircraft are old and if the pilot isn’t that current on type then they can have problems.

Phobos wrote:

Slightly off topic but if you are talking about checkrides then the recent quality of new pilots coming through the system, with in many cases less than 1000 hours is poor, and most have problems passing checkrides of fail them completely

Isn’t that simply a problem of being trained/used to operate vs being trained/used to fly? The day to day business is operating the aircraft, while the check rides requires flying the aircraft. Different skills are needed for “emergency” situations than are used for everyday work.

That video seems to me to be an example of trying to attempt a display when the weather conditions was not good enough, at least not good enough for the pilot (seems he was trying to squeeze a barrel roll beneath the cloud layer, and there wasn’t enough space). I don’t think he did anything wrong, other than to fly in the first place. The weather was worse than they thought.

The elephant is the circulation
ENVA ENOP ENMO, Norway

As I said LeSving the first part of my posting wasn’t directed towards this accident and was slightly off topic due to the previous poster mentioning check rides etc.

As for this accident you are probably correct, would be interesting to see how much time / display flying the pilot had on type in the preceding 12 months, when he was checked last, who checked him and their background etc. I gathered he was a standby pilot for this display. So I wouldn’t have thought he would have a huge amount on type in the last 12 months.
All checks for this type of aircraft would have been in the aircraft and no sim. So, from what I have seen in the UK it’s a mixed bag. For example some examiners you just have to turn up and spend an hour or less in the aircraft with them to have your IR signed off for another 12 months, others are more thorough. No idea about display flying checks though.
Are checks that are predominately carried out only in the aircraft a good thing ? No, you can achieve much much more in a level C/D sim, but these sims are not available for this old aircraft type.
I flew for a while with a former airshow display pilot on the Mosquito who quit years ago citing serious safety concerns with the aircraft, although it was still permitted to fly. The same aircraft crashed a few months after he quit at a UK airshow in the nineties.

Back on topic for a moment (yes, I know that’s out of character, but…), has the CAA published a full copy of their risk assessment for this event, or did they delegate that when authorising the air show?

Glenswinton, SW Scotland, United Kingdom
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