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No problem, I do not mind.
Bird strike blamed : Canadian Snowbirds fatal crash.
- Thread starter Just a civilian pilot
- Start date
I've seen Canadian military here before. I've mentioned the two CF-18 pilots at the California International Airshow, but that was strictly on the ground. Toured a Royal Canadian Navy vessel once as an international guest ship during San Francisco Fleet Week.
I heard that Canada bought some F/A-18s from Australia really cheap, but some just to cannibalize for parts. I doubt they're buying them just for a demonstration team.
All in all it doesn't sound like they want to put in a lot of money into this. The current costs are low because the planes are a way, way sunk cost, and it's an inexpensive plane to fly and maintain. I guess the cost of upgrading the ejection seats for maybe 10 more years' service is also hard to justify even if they're not considered adequate compared to newer seats.
Well - some of the reports are that they typically used the area between the seat and the wall for storing things. I could see how that might interfere with the proper function of the ejection seat.
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You probably know more than me as I don’t follow stuff too much in aviation to be honest anymore.
I pay attention and am interested in aircraft accidents and incidents because I learn from their mistakes and I often sit back and wonder how I would have reacted and managed the situation. Obviously, Airbus stuff interests me the most because thats what I fly.
I remember that. He blacked out and wasn't able to recover when he regained consciousness. The report said he didn't try to do anything to recover until about a second before impact.
Air Force investigation finds Thunderbirds pilot lost consciousness before fatal crash in April
Maj. Stephen Del Bagno “became completely incapacitated for a period” as he practiced the “High Bomb Burst Rejoin” maneuver alongside five other Thunderbirds pilots April 4 at the Nevada Test and Training Range near Las Vegas.
The Snowbirds don't use another plane to carry their cargo and spare parts on tour. Everything they have is carried in the CT-114s.
I don't think Airbus is interested in fighter aircraft. Are you interested in anything to do with Airbus military aircraft? I guess they've absorbed Eurocopter and there was some controversy in the US over a tanker aircraft and how the contract went to Boeing, Airbus, and back to Boeing.
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Not really. That said, when I walk into Chapters ( our big book store chain ) , the first section I go to is aviation and I read both the military and civilian stuff ( then cars ). I still watch cool YouTube stuff with military fighters just for entertainment once in awhile ( lots of Concorde stuff involving the pilots ) but I don’t get too deep into it anymore.
I like Flying still ( not the industry though, not at all ) and my job/company.
when I was younger , I loved the Blue Angels “ threshold” video.
Around Kamloops Airport? I'm pretty sure he was already over a residential part of Kamloops where there's no empty spots to land. To the west they seem to have farmland. Either that or hills.
Easy to judge I guess. He was headed over the neighborhood and wasn't even 200 feet in the air.
Pilot error absolutely contributed, but he also had literal seconds to make a decision.
That's one way to do it. So they also fly everyone they need who isn't a pilot in second seats? The Blue Anglels have Fat Albert, and the USAF Thunderbirds just have a bunch of C-17s rotating in and out from what I've heard. So I guess Canada wouldn't consider taking a C-130 or a C-17 out of circulation as a support plane?
Can't it take drop tanks? I've heard of baggage pods being used where drop tanks or weapons can normally be mounted. I think this is for a USAF flight demonstration team, and those are giveaway stickers in the storage pod.
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Yeah - at that point he was surrounded by solid residential neighborhoods. Maybe try and ditch over the river? But there's very little flat areas around Kamloops.
What? A small aircraft like this isn't likely to take out half a city block. The plane itself weighs about as much as pickup truck The crash itself was fairly limited - just the front yard and whatever fuel caught on fire. But the problem would have been what to do. I doubt anyone reasonable pilot's first instinct is to find a place to ditch when the engine is still minimally functional, but to find a way back to land a plane. As Astro said, his main mistake seems to have been trying to climb on an engine where the chances of stalling were higher. He was surrounded by residential neighborhoods, so exactly where do you think it could have been ditched without risking landing into a house, pedestrian, or a vehicle?
Based on the crash location map in post #33, he should have leveled off and ditch it in the river ... might have also given them both a better chance of ejection before the jet hit the river.
The river is right there, slight angle to the south, perfect river. Been in and out of that airport dozens of times. A gentle turn would have put him over the river. Thankfully he missed the busy stores, schools, apartments, old folks home, library, and more. Crashed not 300' from my best friend's aunt and uncle. I've walked that area several times. Swam in the river, walked the beach, and gone to her grandmother's old age home, been in the stores around there. There is also a bulk plant with a tank farm nearby, what if he had crashed into it with that display of poor airmanship. That is where I took my glider lessons at as well. Even in a small glider, not doing jef speeds, and full of Jet fuel, and heavy like a jet is, my instructor told me repeatedly, if ever its in doubt that we can make it back to the airport, head for the river, try for the beach if low water and nobody is on it, otherwise the water. Under no circumstances are we risking innocent lives by crashing in Brock. Brock is the locals name for that neighborhood. My dad told me the same thing flying in and out in helicopters. If we are going down, we go down in the river, not in Brock. It was an easy choice, he screwed up and made the wrong one. A pilot should always have a plan before every take off, about what to do if something goes wrong, like losing an engine, especially in a single engine, and heavy. He had just taken off, so was heavy with fuel, he hadn't burned off hundreds of gallons, and it wasn't a twin. I personally would have been extremely upset with myself, if i were the pilot, and made such poor choices. I stand by what I said in my first post on this topic, he screwed up badly.
That was where the crash was, but I haven't seen any maps depicting where the plane was at the time of the likely bird ingestion.
OK - found more information. I hadn't seen this video before from plane spotters.
It's maybe about 7 seconds from the time he's over the end of the runway before he starts to break off from his wingman, and we know that he tried to pull up to turn around. But he's starting to drop 10 seconds later. The commentator (who has flown with the Snowbirds before for documentaries and who produces air shows) says that they're taught to get to minimum altitude before ejecting.
Here’s more on the Thunderbird Pilot. The Commander of the Thunderbirds was later released from his command for “loss of confidence in his leadership and risk management style”
So folks, mistakes get made even with highly trained pilots in both CANADA and the US. It’s sad they gave their lives to the cause.
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Astro believes he screwed up badly by climbing too quickly which made it more likely to stall. And the report says the climb caused the stall and they should review takeoff procedures.
There have been many who have gone over the training that pilots have with the CT-114 Tutor. It's kind of hard to overcome one's own training. This commentator is a former Snowbirds commander (and CF-18 pilot), and he said that when there's an engine problem with this aircraft, they're trained to gain altitude.
Well this is. In this particular airplane. And in fact in many military airplanes or many airplanes. If you have an issue you want get away from the ground. That's the first priority. Climb to cope, right. Create time and distance away from the ground so you can process what's going on. In this scenario, the way I'm reading this is that it looks like there's been something going wrong with the single engine. There's some sort of stoppage of power. And that is in this airplane what you're trained to do because we don't have a second engine whatever excess energy you have above your glide speed you zoom to convert that extra kinetic energy into potential energy in terms of altitude. And so he probably experienced some sort of engine power loss and then zoomed with whatever energy he had, which would not have been much there.
But what's going to happen here is that they're going to modify their training for takeoffs, and what do wth partial loss of power.
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