I don't want to drift away from the question of that briefing. Line item which I find much more compelling to the fallout of this accident than the regurgitation of basic rejoin academics I got from tHuNderbIrD oNe.
Not to mention I don't think there was any intent to "rejoin" or whatever. It was two separate formations that were merged by a miniscule, but monumental deadly error. Keep in mind, I doubt DG has privy to ALL of the briefing. It is true that there are often side briefings, such as the L's and O's side briefing I was part of at Wings Over Houston. It's very plausible that the main briefing, say for the Blue Angels - they're not going to talk through their whole show in front of everyone, it'll be more like, you'll be starting at X time, clouds are adequate so you'll be doing your high show... we didn't hear the nitty gritty at all. I lean towards this being a spur of the moment mistake, that was accepted by both flight leads but in particular of the fighter flight - because they assumed that there was adequate separation to accomplish what they were being asked to do. Lack of pushback from pilots in a briefing COULD be a culture problem, or it could be that they were all comfortable with what was said, because it seemed safe based on their prior experience.
There are a bunch of variables in this accident that all went perfectly wrong. If the fighters had maintained echelon right instead of transitioning to trail, this wouldn't have happened. If they'd maintained altitude, been 3 seconds ahead, bombers had been 3 seconds slower, etc... it would have only taken a tiny variable to keep this from going wrong, but
my takeaway is that the margins need to be a LOT bigger when bringing separate formations onto the same show line so that it doesn't become a matter of seconds.
I'd imagine Craig, being a professional, would be the first to take responsibility for not seeing Texas Raiders,
but he shouldn't have been in a position as #3 in the fighter flight where collision avoidance was necessary.
Also, to Dan's point about the Air Boss not being qualified - I think he's off on that. Those pilots wouldn't have accepted his being a "boss" with authority to say when they take off, when to make turns, what altitudes, etc... if there wasn't a level of trust in his orchestration ability. Complacency, or getting lax with separation standards, or whatever happened is not a function of inexperience, or lack of qualification, but experience and asking for too much, because you think you can. You can't have it both ways. I'd argue the same is probably true for the FAA. This air boss has always done OK, so we don't need to look at this in closer detail. Accidents happen to people of all levels of experience and checks and balances are good for government, and they are good for us as pilots, too.
For all the "culture" accusations, I think this is going to come down to a bad mistake by some good folks, compounded by a complacency because it had worked pretty well for a long time. If anything, the way I see it, the bad weather the day before, small crowd, low aircraft turnout, all might have contributed to unspoken pressure to bring the fighters down lower for a longer string of aircraft and better views for the crowd, which took out the safety margin of the altitude separation. The air boss, at the end of the day, was trying to put on a good SHOW for the audience, and that's the ultimate pressure, especially when all you are doing is relatively boring flybys.
There's a significant irony in that I know, from hearing various conversations at Redbird, that CAF HQ had tried
so hard over the previous years to make this a safe show, by not having jet teams, hardly any acro - just the biplane single ship act and the P-51C acro, which is relatively tame and would have been next after this set, and had mainly just the racetrack or dogbone flybys in a serious attempt to keep the show safe.
