Dallas midair tragedy: New videos show startling change in flight path of p-63(planeandpilotmag.com) |
Dallas midair tragedy: New videos show startling change in flight path of p-63(planeandpilotmag.com) |
hitting a drone is unlikely to cause significant damage unless it hit in just the right spot. Seeing and overreacting to a drone might cause some damage but there is probably one second of altitude change there if any - that collision was already quite likely from the intercept path being flown. I've not flown either of those aircraft (before my time) but looking underneath during a turn requires effort and may not have even been possible, especially if there was a lack of awareness to prompt the look.
I think Juan's youtube video explaining the airborne change of directive from what in the comments on that video appears to have been an under briefed, and sadly under questioned briefing, is by far the most likely explanation.
While the prop is, uh, properly a wing, and technically hitting something with it would interrupt the airflow, they're quite strong and would likely just destroy the object, slightly damaging the prop. If it did damage it beyond usability, it'd been way more obvious in the video and with the prop breaking off.
If you're talking about the aircraft stalling, then it's unlikely as we don't see that significant of a movement in the brief second of video. Under g-load (an "accelerated stall") the buffer between the onset of the stall and the stall itself is decreased, and as I said elsewhere that while I have no familiarity with the handling characteristics of that aircraft, there's simply doesn't look like enough time for a stall to develop between when the aircraft supposedly hit a drone and for-sure hit the other aircraft. And from what I could see, the movement doesn't at all look like a stall, and from the moment I saw the two aircraft in the video you can see the intercept occurring - that's likely harder for the unfamiliar to see being unfamiliar with the concept of two disparate turning circles crossing at a point in the future, differing because of bank angle (one or even both "circles - i.e. vectors - could even be straight lines) and because of differing speeds.
From the limited videos I've seen, one pilot could not, or simply did not, see the other aircraft, either because of the bank angle blocking the view or not realizing the aircraft was there and being focused elsewhere (such as the aircraft in from of them) and simply ran into the other aircraft. How they got into that position is the difficult investigation, and Juan's YouTube video pointed out that the sudden airborne airboss directive was to cross flight paths, when they didn't brief such and rather unlikely had ever practiced such, and may not have even realized such.
...otherwise those noise complaints are getting extreme.
The US has engaged in a series of unprovoked wars for decades, killing millions of innocent people and losing almost everyone.
Why would you want to participate in this sequence of genocides and war crimes?
Fighter jocks invented the humblebrag. (Source: My dad was one, plus my own service aboard a Navy aircraft carrier.)
Serious people would show the video at normal speed, then slowed done, and added timecode, as well as documenting their methods. They also wouldn't make assumptions about what was going on, eg 'tries to restart the engine'. These black blobs look to me like compression artifacts, from zooming a video from a phone camera that was compressed for storage and then compressed again when uploaded to social media.
Also, even if there was an object and the engine went out (which seems unlikely, most drones are pretty fragile and would be destroyed by a propellor), losing power doesn't mean losing all control of the plane. Manual flight control would still work to some extent. But I don't see last-minute efforts to avoid a collision that tragically failed; it looks like the fighter was pointed straight at the bomber.
I haven't checked to see if it originates on 4chan, but it wouldn't surprise me. No-standards amateur sleuthing is the norm there, occasionally they get something right but their hit rate is like 5% at best. That's not stereotyping, I've been a regular there since 2008.
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EDIT: fieryskiff11 33 minutes ago [dead] | parent | next [–]
>I've been a regular there since 2008 Your username makes sense now
Not sure why, it's a made-up word I came up with in the 1990s for myself and is not meant to convey any secondary meaning. 4chan allows persistent usernames but I've never bothered to create one.
https://simpleflying.com/preliminary-ntsb-report-dallas-cras...
(Seriously, the first 54 seconds of the video linked in the parent comment was just talking about local weather and a video of some trees.)
EDIT: I think it was this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C342dfNPCyg
Basically, it appears that the organizer/commander instructed the p-63f to take the 500ft path (distance from the crowd) and the b-17g to move to 1000ft distance while they were at the same altitude. Disorganization from the getgo led to the crash. If you see a general aviation crash and want to know what happened, check out what Dan has to say first.
Seriously though, it does feel like a classic fuck up where two planes intended to be at separate flight levels end up at the same level temporarily.
If so - I dont see how this shouldnt be tried criminally. Similar to how someone would be tried for driving a car through a pedestrian area and striking someone, even if they had not explicit intent to harm.
> Give way to and do not interfere with other aircraft.
> Fly at or below FAA-authorized altitudes in controlled airspace (Class B, C, D, and surface Class E designated for an airport) only with prior FAA authorization by using LAANC or DroneZone.
> Flying drones in restricted airspace is not allowed. Drone pilots should always check for airspace restrictions prior to flight on our B4UFLY app or the UAS Facility Maps webpage.
Beyond needing to abide by the file mile rule, this airspace would have had an active TFR.
The sad reality of this incident is that it was likely just a result of poor vertical separation, either due to badly planned flight paths or lack of preparation, more likely both.
We've all got our irrational fears, but whether you're flying in a jumbo jet or a single-prop bug-smasher this one is very irrational indeed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unmanned_aerial_vehicl...
Maybe if someone is deliberately flying near an airport and moves into the exact right position at the right time without first being spotted
But in practice, mainstream drones are GPS locked to not fly anywhere near airports and it's not really realistic to just accidentally get a drone too close to an airplane anywhere else. Also, the sky is a massive place and drones have limited flight time. I think the drone-airplane collision fears are greatly exaggerated outside of unique low-altitude specialty flying like airshows.
Hitting a drone is your worst nightmare while piloting small aircraft?
Or hitting a plane is your worst nightmare when flying a drone?
A small GA aircraft hitting a drone has a very high fatality chance, particularly in the stages of flight most likely to encounter amateur drone operators (ie. takeoff and landing).
You're way to more likely to be killed by a midair in the pattern at an uncontrolled field than anything drone related.
Although possible, war planes should not be as affected by strikes.
Why do you think it's a drone?
There is nothing special about a war plane that makes it less affected by strikes of any kind, be from birds or drones alike.
A stall in aircraft parlance refers to a change in airflow over the wings or control surfaces that causes the sudden or progressive loss of aerodynamic lift. This is an effect caused by the surface moving through the air at an excessive angle, so that the air stops flowing smoothly over the lifting surface, instead breaking down into a chaotic flow.
Stalls typically happen at low speeds, where an aircraft is pitching up excessively, but can also happen at higher speeds in steep turns or other maneuvers where the g forces on an aircraft make the wings have to support multiple times their normal load.
A midair collision with a small object is unlikely to cause a stall, unless it were to provoke a secondary reaction by the pilot or the control surfaces directly.
Either way, in this case the aircraft in question had the bomber in a blind spot and probably could not see the danger of collision, and in fact may have been frantically looking for it, even lowering the nose to get better visibility, having lost sight of it in a slightly distracted moment.
AFAIK there is no evidence of any condition here aside from inadequate planning, inadequate separation, and pilot error.
As a pilot I am only too aware of the possibility for this kind of accident to occur when operating in the vicinity of other aircraft. It’s surprisingly easy to collide with other aircraft despite the huge amount of empty space lol around you.
It usually takes a few confounding factors to line up to cause disasters to occur in aviation… it’s almost never just one or two.
Beware that it will count as flight instruction and you may end up hooked and forking out $20k for a private pilot license.
Isn't that some sort of fallacy?
Just because they are respected doesn't mean something else they are doing is wrong.
560,000 views, times a minimum of one man-minute wasted (that's just the intro, I didn't let the person waste away any rest of my life) is 1 man-year and 23 man-days of collectively wasted time, just to add a couple extra dollars of ad revenue.
This person is saying that he values a couple of extra dollars and not the one resource that you can't get more of: time in your life.
You're oddly barking up the wrong tree by complaining about a genuine pilot's non-sponsored youtube channel to recommend a website that is passenger focused.
It's like complaining about a scientific journal having too many words and recommending the Yahoo! Health article instead. It's a different audience.
There's a reason people are using add-ons that let you skip that kind of garbage in Youtube videos.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/sponsorblock/
> SponsorBlock lets you skip over ... annoying parts of YouTube videos.
You can find the long form narrative boring. That's ok. There is no right way to tell a story.
How many hours of training did you receive before flying without a more senior pilot with you? The L39 type rating requirement is a thousand hours but it won't be in the jet itself. I plan to do aerobatic training and everything but last I checked the Jet Warbird Training Center program was under 20 hours over a few days which terrifies me. Is that really enough training?
Matt Guthmiller also has some recent videos on getting an L-39 up and running, and his first flights in it.
That definitely makes me feel better. I've gone into pilot training with a lot of fear and it's always come out "omg this feels like home" so I'm hopeful once I'm in the L39 it will be a similar experience :)
What other airplanes should I practice in for the 1000 hours authorization after getting my PPL in the 172? Once I get it I'll join PlusOne Flyers here in SD so I should have a diverse set of planes to practice with.
Edit: I have my email in the profile if there’s any way you could share the video. I’d love to see all the content from the ground school portions especially
Edit: to add a little to this since I started thinking about it, while the total flight time seems fairly low, we would go fly in absolutely any weather short of an actual thunderstorm, and the IPs for the most part made the students do the flying/navigating/communicating/planning/etc. Flying close formation in drafty clouds with pounding rain would humble a low-time pilot, and occasionally it'd be bad enough to get a grunt out of the mostly drowsing (it seemed) graybeard in the backseat. My last assignment in the AF was to go teach UPT (at the base I learned at), and hoo boy, did I see that the vast majority of the stress that the students underwent was mostly self-induced and the flying was about as basic as we could do - it just seemed (and was) hard for the students because we all were so, to paraphrase a great philosopher, unknowing about our unknowns.
Anyway, I'm sure you'll do fine learning to fly the L-39. It's a popular and comparatively affordable jet airplane I understand and looks like fun.
How different are the T-37/38s from common civilian trainers like the 172? How good were the simulators back then (I haven't use any sims outside of consumer stuff so I have no real point of comparison)?
What do you mean by pursuing training without rush or struggle? Looking at the cost of fuel and rental for the first thousand hours, let alone the cost of the jet with new TFE engine, I'm much more scared of stretching out the training so much that I'm always rusty.
> to add a little to this since I started thinking about it, while the total flight time seems fairly low, we would go fly in absolutely any weather short of an actual thunderstorm, and the IPs for the most part made the students do the flying/navigating/communicating/planning/etc. Flying close formation in drafty clouds with pounding rain would humble a low-time pilot, and occasionally it'd be bad enough to get a grunt out of the mostly drowsing (it seemed) graybeard in the backseat.
That sounds scary - I've been taught so far that bad weather is one of the leading cause of GA fatal accidents thunderstorm or no. Were your trainers or the jets themselves just better at withstanding adverse weather? Or are we civies too risk averse? I can't imagine doing it in close formation.
Doubly-so if it's a several pound metal ball...
You don't want to hit anything in an aircraft, ever.
https://warbirdsnews.com/warbird-restorations/caf-bell-p-63f...
The P-63 did (example picture [0]), like many others that were designed to attack bombers and/or ground targets.
Regardless, modernly speaking, very few (if any) aircraft have bullet proof windshields. They are impractical for a number of reasons, including weight, size, thickness (distortion of picture), and efficacy. If a pilot is within small-arms distance they generally are already in trouble...
Usually, when I see a reasonable but dead comment, I vouch for it. If the commenter is shadowbanned and their other most recent comments are also reasonable and civil, I (sometimes) alert them to their status.
But, I would not be surprised it was tried, particularly with WWII era machines. There's very little actual benefit to having one on any aircraft, even CAS aircraft. A modernly restored version meant for airshows and racing probably would have replaced it for something more modern and lighter weight.
There's no particular reason for wikipedia to mention it because it was a very common feature in this era. It would be like mentioning that it had self-sealing fuel tanks. It was also a feature that could be present or not between different models, and could even be retrofitted to a plane once it was in service.
Regarding the wreck-finder below: he likely does know exactly what it was because he likely started by looking up the crash report (and based on his claimed date, it's probably s/n, 44-2031)
This is exactly what a typical armored windscreen looked like in this era (e.g. https://ww2aircraft.net/forum/threads/armored-windscreen-for...)
My recommendation is, 1) get your instrument rating and fly IFR enough to get comfortable doing that, 2) get some aerobatic lessons, including some unusual attitude recoveries, in any aerobatic plane, even if it's a Cessna 152 Aerobat, and 3) get some hours in a fast, slippery plane that requires you to plan your descents from 30+ miles out; could be a Cirrus, a Columbia, a Mooney, a Lancair, or a Bonanza, etc. Retractable experience is a plus too (get 10-20 hours in a Piper Arrow or something). And be prepared to pay for it all!
Thank you! For what it's worth, it really shows! The vast majority of L39 videos online are low effort vanity dumps from hangar to hangar taken by a GoPro or two poorly positioned in the cockpit - you can rarely see the instrumentation, checklists, or anything remotely useful.
Your video towers above others. With the amount of cockpit detail visible in the main 3rd person view and in the B-roll like the red levers. Your hands visible on the throttle and stick so it's easy to see what you're doing and when the instructor has control. Beautiful exterior view from the wing during simulated emergencies and landing gear retractions. Down to the instructor's commentary during the nose tracking exercise with visible turbulence. Oh and most of the time, glare permitting, I can make out all of the gauges! ALL IN 4K!
The classroom videos are just icing on the cake with a cherry on top. One thing I didn't quite get though... what was the strap thing? :)
> My recommendation is, 1) get your instrument rating and fly IFR enough to get comfortable doing that, 2) get some aerobatic lessons, including some unusual attitude recoveries, in any aerobatic plane, even if it's a Cessna 152 Aerobat, and 3) get some hours in a fast, slippery plane that requires you to plan your descents from 30+ miles out; could be a Cirrus, a Columbia, a Mooney, a Lancair, or a Bonanza, etc. Retractable experience is a plus too (get 10-20 hours in a Piper Arrow or something). And be prepared to pay for it all!
Pretty much the plan I had, though I was planning to do aerobatic training with CP Aviation focusing on recoveries (I'm not an adrenaline junkie, just paranoid) before jumping into IFR. Any reason to do IFR before aerobatics?
A Mooney with long range tanks has been my plan for years because it would allow me to visit family in a single hop with a reasonable enough travel time to do it every other weekend (easy 5-10 hours per week), so that's encouraging. Once again, thank you!
Side note: how tall are you, if I may ask? That cockpit is cramped.
The instructor in that video was poking fun of the other instructor (who will show up in the next video) because he has a gut, and the stick in the rear cockpit hits his gut. So there's a "bungee" strap to hold the stick forward when you're getting in and out. But at the end of the video, the stick ends up hitting the first instructor's gut, so I poked fun of him at the end.
> Any reason to do IFR before aerobatics?
Nah, the order doesn't matter.
> how tall are you, if I may ask? That cockpit is cramped.
I'm 6'2 or about 187 cm, but I've had passengers up to 6'6 in the rear cockpit. Size usually isn't a problem. And it's less cramped than some MiG cockpits I've seen.
Multiple planes crashed with fatalities vecause of birds, as far as I am aware none have done so because of a drone.
The fear of drones had led to pilots reporting drone sightings at 10,000 feet in the middle of the Ocean, thousands of miles from shore.
"Several commenters noted that the AMA analyzed those reported ‘incidents’ and found that out of the 764 reported records, only 27 (or 3.5%) were identified as a near mid-air collision, with nearly all of those involving government-authorized military drones"
I tell everyone these things are not for kids, especially the $1K+ drones capable of high altitudes and speeds. If you go online and find a video of someone doing something stupid, you’ll find an army of enthusiasts telling them so in the comments because they want to preserve the hobby.
I assume you mean ADS-B in? Is the receiver in the drone itself or in the ground station/transmitter?
We do have confirmed strikes from drones, and the damage has been devastating. We do have confirmed strikes with fatalities from birds. There is not much difference between a bird and a drone when an aircraft strikes it at speed...
These drones are often operated by folks with zero training and zero deference for the law or aviation safety (highlighted by the fact they're operating near an airport). It's just a matter of time... if it hasn't already happened right here in this Dallas incident.
Anything is possible, there is a guy that was killed by his beard, shot by a dog and every year several people die from being tangled on bedsheets. Lets keep things in proportion.
I, for one, am unclear why we immediately jumped to regulating drones, but when Tespa autopilot kills people, nobody seems to care?
The real point is that people in this thread are too quick to blame drones, when geese outnumbet them 1000 to one. I live near an airport and a huge flock of geese is constantly here. When I see people with real drones, they tend to know whay they are doing.
The only people I see fooling around are people who buy a tiny drone for $50 on Amazon and the worst those drones can do is get aruck in your hair while filming nudes.
Yup.
> There is not much difference between a bird and a drone when an aircraft strikes it at speed...
Open to debate.
Even if true: There's a whole lot more birds near airports than illegally operating drones. So even if there's some tiny, absolute risk, the relative risk appears low.
Really? Very high? My uneducated guess is that there's a very high chance of damage to the airplane, but not of crash landing, and certainly not of death.
That's because there have not been any: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unmanned_aerial_vehicl...
I imagine a similar distribution with drone strikes, as most drones do not weigh as much as a goose, at least of those in the hands of a typical idiot (who would fly in the path of a plane).
That's why 'very high fatality chance' doesn't seem right to me, but I can't find any statistics on it.
But these points don't mean it's any less fatal to hit a drone in a small plane than a goose.
Hitting things in aircraft isn't a recipe for a good time... ever.
The claim was, hitting a drone has a high chance of being fatal - the same high chance hitting a bird has... particularly in vulnerable stages of flight. Nothing you, or anyone else has offered counters this claim, because it's just reality. Hitting things in aircraft is never a good thing, and is always a significant cause for concern.
We've been lucky so far more idiots haven't flown drones closer to airshows or airports. There are plenty, and there have been collisions with devastating damage but luckily no fatalities (perhaps yet). There are plenty of pictures on the internet if you want to compare damages to bird strikes.
It's unclear whether it's the same chance hitting a bird has. You assert it is.
As to a high chance of fatality from bird strike: no. There's >10k bird strikes per year in the US and most years there isn't a single bird strike related fatal accident. Estimates of death are on the order of 1 death related to bird strike per billion flight hours.
Even if drones are the same risk per collision, drones are much rarer near runways than birds.
There's no such thing in the world as zero risk, but if drones are a small fraction of a risk that's less than 1 death per billion flight hours, I'd say that we have bigger fish to fry.
Sure there is. On average there are about 13000 bird strikes a year. What fraction of those result in a fatality? The FAA says a bit under 400 pilots die every year, however since 1990 there have been just 292 fatalities globally that can be attributed to wildlife strikes (and not all are birds).
That is a pretty clear repudiation of any claim that hitting a drone has a "high chance of being fatal."
Which is where most strikes occur. Low speed (relative for an aircraft) and low altitude.
A bird hitting the prop, sucked into an engine, tail strike, windscreen, etc... all can be devastating for any aircraft, be it GA or commercial.
A drone strike isn't somehow going to be better for the aircraft...