Peter wrote:
It doesn’t say anything of obvious use but reading between the lines (no doubt a lot of lawyers are swarming over this accident) it is full of suggestions that there may have been issues with less than book performance.
Are there many / any aircraft of any vintage than manage book?
It is a worrisome trend Fuji. And it does not only concern these airplanes, even though they have been the prominent targets recently. But it is theoretically at least very worrisome for all of GA, as it could very fast also concern such products.
We have seen Airbus ground Concorde against the explicit wish of the operators. That one was high profile but it was grounding an operating and existing fleet within an airline. Here, Airbus used the "we’ll support you for €€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€€ trick, so they could not be sued.
Airbus has also grounded the SE210 Caravelle, which took away several working airframes in Africa and one in Sweden, which was supposed to fly as a museum airplane. Airbus said no. They knew that neither the Africans nor the Swedish Club would make trouble. This one was a fully intentional withdrawal of the certificate of airworthiness, turning operating airframes into museum pieces.
In theory, any manufacturer of certified airplanes can do this. Not many will, granted, but it can also mean Avionic producers, Engine producers e.t.c. could in theory withdraw their support in such a way that the concerned equipment can no longer be used. That is not orphaning it, for which there are procedures, this is intentionally withdrawing it.
In the US, this seems not to be that easy, Beech tried it with the Starship, still one of them is flying. In europe, it appears easier.
At the moment, this stunt was only done by Airbus and also RR (in the case of the Vulcan). We’ll have to see if they will pull the same on the Hunter (RR could), in which I thing also other RR powered airplanes could be in trouble. I would not be surprised however if the Shoreham accident would be the end for demonstration flying of jets in the UK. Hopefully not everywhere.
LeSving wrote:
Worrisome, how? This is a jet fighter, it’s tailor made for the military, it’s a war machine.
Because it is not limited to ex-military aircraft.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
We have seen Airbus ground Concorde against the explicit wish of the operators.
Sorry, but this is not entirely true. Concorde was grounded by it’s operators Air France and British Airways because after the accident they could no longer operate it profitably. Airbus only withdrew it’s support to the type after the operators had donated their aircraft to museums.
what_next wrote:
Concorde was grounded by it’s operators Air France and British Airways because after the accident they could no longer operate it profitably. Airbus only withdrew it’s support to the type after the operators had donated their aircraft to museums.
I’d rather not start this discussion again, but while technically this may be so, for all practical purposes Airbus pulled the rug from under British Airways by rising the cost for that support into something nobody would be able to pay. Yes, once BA announced that they would also stop flying they kept going until then. But the initiative came from Air France and Airbus. It was their clear intention grounding the plane as they were loosing money after Gonesse. And Air France did not want BA to continue as the sole operator. Of course, 9-11 helped that cause as also BA had problems filling it thereafter…
In the case of the Caravelle, the CofA was pulled without giving the last operators even a lot of notice. And it went straight into the face of the Caravelle Association in Sweden, also with their refusal to even do the minimal support which would have been needed for a privately operated one.
It’s a sorry story and one which has taught me exactly one thing: Never own a French built airplane. In that case, American built is the MUCH safer option. These people know what heritage is and what they owe to it. Europe never gave much of a damn.
I don’t want to drive this too far off topic, but there are numerous versions of that story, one of them being that BA would not have let Branson have Concorde no matter what. (And whether his proposition was real or just yet another publicity seeking stunt is another matter 
).
Whoever flies Concorde flies the national flag and BA would have ended up ranking no higher than a long+short haul version of Easyjet 
BA did not have problems filling Concorde at GBP 3500 one-way. They did lose a big chunk of regulars in 9/11 but the banking business carries on spending and they would have rebuilt the business.
There were maintenance issues too, but nothing that can’t be solved with a suitable ticket price
Speaking of the Hunter etc, in the RAF days the DOC of these jets was of the order of GBP 30k per hour. I don’t suppose any private owner is going to pay that.
Peter wrote:
Speaking of the Hunter etc, in the RAF days the DOC of these jets was of the order of GBP 30k per hour. I don’t suppose any private owner is going to pay that.
The Swiss Hunters are flown quite successfully and safely for about £5000 per hour, the Vampires for about £4000 per hour. I do hope they can continue to do so. The Swiss FOCA has so far been quite good to historical airplanes. That is why some of the nicest exemplars of rare planes are here, 4x JU52-3M as well as the Connie and a DC3.
Can the aerobatic pilots here see anything wrong in this video?
That show was terminated at that point, AFAIK.
If this is true, some heads are going to roll.
With the usual caveat on Monday morning quarterbacking on scant information, the clip appears to show:
- not the most ideal weather, quite murky, possibly with poorly defined horizon
- may be initiating the manoeuvre towards the crowd and quite low, you would need to know what exactly was the approved display sequence and was he where he planned to be with respect to the display line?
- he seems to be dishing out of a not a very elegantly executed quite tight barrel roll, low level, not a good place to be – barrel rolls are positive g, so not unusual to see them used in displays, but they do not maintain a line like an axial slow roll, which may have shifted him further towards the crowd
Peter wrote:
Can the aerobatic pilots here see anything wrong in this video?
Well we know the claimed grounds for the director calling an end (if he did), but I dont think that could be easily established from the video because we dont have their perspective of the crowd line or height that the flight director would have had.
In any event (if true) we all make mistakes. For me (if mistakes were made) was the debrief adequate, were the grounds established and was everyone satisfied the pilot was “safe” to continue? 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.
