Of all of the recommendations in the report, how many were that the pilot should have behaved differently in a split second and how many were about systematic errors made by others?
….having said that, I want to make it quite clear that I am only in this debate on the academic question of whether Deterrence works, not because I have any views on this particular case.
I absolutely don’t.
But what do we call an error? For instance, entering an aerobatic manoeuvre at the wrong airspeed might just be an error caused by mis-remembering an airspeed, or remembering the airspeed for the wrong aircraft. But entering one way below the minimum altitude that you’re well aware of (and were probably briefed of again the morning of the flight) might not be, that might have been deliberate – in which case, it wasn’t an error – it was deliberate, and premeditated, and done knowingly. I can imagine airshow pilots doing such things deliberately out of the wish to give the spectators a better show.
I can imagine airshow pilots doing such things deliberately out of the wish to give the spectators a better show.
Wasn’t there a study done quite recently, looking into why so many supposedly experienced pilots make silly mistakes when flying at airshows?
The psychology behind this is fairly obvious!
Peter wrote:
Wasn’t there a study done quite recently, looking into why so many supposedly experienced pilots make silly mistakes when flying at airshows?
This is one of the reasons why they don’t let people like you and me fly displays. Only well trained, disciplined (ex) air force professionals. Because they can be trusted to stay cool and observe the limitations even in “split second” time frames.
A friend of mine had his low level display waiver at age 18 and at that time was flying a two ship aerobatic display with his father, with Pitts aircraft. He started flying at age 12, in the front seat of a Citabria with his dad behind. Apparently the lack of Air Force experience 
didn’t hold him back.
The photo is an old one. He is today the best aerobatic pilot in the area, he can fly anything and well.
What next: on another forum, it was pointed out that the start of a loop consists of a low pass with a relatively gentle pullup. Low-passes can be performed at less than 500 feet, and clearly one must be allowed to pull up from them, or the whole display would have to consist of low-passes. The Hunter can gain height during a loop. If performed accurately it could enter the loop without being in an unusual attitude until it was well above 500 feet, and exit the loop well above 500 feet. I can’t judge whether this is a robust defence, but if this were the original intention of the pilot, it seems to me not entirely unreasonable and not necessarily outside of the spirit of the regulations either.
This has been around since CRM was made mandatory around Europe and beaten to death since then. It works in the same ideal world as Communism.
Any sane political party will tread the line somewhere between aiming for an unachievable egalitarian utopia and unrestrained free-marketism. Paralleling this, recent literature has moved on from advocating ‘no-blame’ cultures to ‘just cultures’. i.e. those where people who are trying hard to perform well are allowed to discuss errors without fear of censure but those who are habitually reckless or grossly negligent are still open to prosecution. There’s a large body of literature on the practical difficulties this entails.
From the outside my impression that the aviation industry is genuinely good at learning from errors and instituting safe systems – perhaps imperfect but certainly a world better than the medical industry. It seems to me that, with recent drives in several countries to erode the separation between accident investigation/confidential reporting and legal processes, rather than being an unachievable ideal, ‘no-blame’ reporting is something that has paid huge safety dividends in the past but that is currently under threat.
kwlf wrote:
…rather than being an unachievable ideal, ‘no-blame’ reporting is something that has paid huge safety dividends in the past but that is currently under threat.
In the little company where I fly (12 aeroplanes) during the last year alone two colleagues fell victim to that “no blame” or anonymous reporting “culture”. In both cases co-pilots “anonymously” reported non-adherence to SOPs or breaches of safety procedures. As there is no such thing in a small company as anonymity, in both cases the working contracts were terminated with immediate efffect, something that is otherwise very difficult to achieve under German employment legislation. I have lost my faith in all these concepts which work beautifully on paper but not at all in real life.
kwlf wrote:
Low-passes can be performed at less than 500 feet…
Why would that be? “Minimum display altitude” means exactly that. And that “low pass” was not even over the runway.
what_next wrote:
I have lost my faith in all these concepts which work beautifully on paper but not at all in real life.
Tell me, how can that work beautifully on paper when it is so blatantly obvious that the legislation itself (the paper) say no such thing, but quite the opposite. To make it work, at least requires that it actually works on paper first. You haven’t even tried IMO.
LeSving wrote:
You haven’t even tried IMO.
How would you know that?
