My brother witnessed a fatal crash today...

TangoWhiskey

TangoWhiskey

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He was texting me a it happened, at Kansas City's Charles B Wheeler airport, where an airshow happens this weekend. We overnighted there on the way to Denver from OSH.

You can find the story on CNN and other news sites. Was a Delta pilot in his biplane, impacted the grass. So awful.


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I was going to go to that airshow with my wife and my parents but decided not to go. I think it would have been tough to witness...
 
read about it earlier on the Thunderbirds fb page......bad, bad, bad. :(
 
Very sad indeed.... I came across this video (This video is of the crash) and it had excellent sound and I wondered, "I see him recovering, but I don't hear him recovering. Just before he spun as he was pulling out you could hear the engine burp like he came in with the throttle but the fuel didn't come past the first bit. When the power failed to come through as he was pulling he accelerated stalled and spun with a double down vector. Pretty brutal, thankfully (if such a thing can be said) it would have been instantaneous and he did not suffer to burn to death.
 
Watched it a few more times. I think he gyroscopicaly unported the fuel. The engine cuts out at 25 seconds, he recovers, the engine finally starts to recover but far too late. That's the hazard with the gyroscopic tumbling, all the energy comes from the engine or gravity, and if you're low and the engine quits, you have no kinetic energy in the bank, you don't have the space for gravity to accelerate you to flying speed + the energy required to change vectors.
 
Those who do this know the risk..

Its really too bad.
 
Henning said:
Watched it a few more times. I think he gyroscopicaly unported the fuel. The engine cuts out at 25 seconds, he recovers, the engine finally starts to recover but far too late. That's the hazard with the gyroscopic tumbling, all the energy comes from the engine or gravity, and if you're low and the engine quits, you have no kinetic energy in the bank, you don't have the space for gravity to accelerate you to flying speed + the energy required to change vectors.
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Another angle - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLHjfMNwdYg

Don't know who filmed this, but from the angle, we must have been standing very close to each other ( I think I was slightly to camera right ). I don't know who the guy in the red minivan is, but he's the one whose body language told the whole story when he went around the plane, looking into the cockpit. He just stopped, backed up, and put his hands on his head and watched - then he moved his vehicle.

There's a comment on the red board about it:

>>
Very sad. It was a gyroscopic maneuver done at low airspeed that decayed into an inverted spin. It was supposed to have stopped with the plane vertical down and then a quarter loop pullout. It looks like it could have initially been entered with too little airspeed, which caused a sluggish recovery. You could see it go one rotation past where he should have stopped (based on the same maneuver I've seen him perform) and then develop into a plain old inverted spin. The inverted spin was not planned. I saw the terrible video. You could hear him pull power off for emergency spin recovery after the inverted spin developed. Airshow pilots don't normally pull power off to stop a spin. In this case, he had clearly lost control, realized it, and invoked emergency spin recovery (power off). He got the inverted spin stopped on heading, but then pulled hard trying to level out. He might have been fine if the power was in, but with power off, and a hard pull (seeing his critically low altitude) the plane stalled during the pull and entered an upright spin into the ground. There were no unusual "puffs" of smoke. That was just the smoke system which was functioning the whole time, as was the engine. The "pops" being mentioned were probably just the engine backfiring a bit when the power was pulled off.
<<

I think it was the inverted spin that got me thinking - something isn't right. At that point, he just 'looked' too low to be doing a vertical-down maneuver. It won't show well on any videos, because there really isn't much scale, but that's about the time I started to think that it wouldn't end well.
 
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Henning said:
Watched it a few more times. I think he gyroscopicaly unported the fuel. The engine cuts out at 25 seconds, he recovers, the engine finally starts to recover but far too late. That's the hazard with the gyroscopic tumbling, all the energy comes from the engine or gravity, and if you're low and the engine quits, you have no kinetic energy in the bank, you don't have the space for gravity to accelerate you to flying speed + the energy required to change vectors.
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He did a tumble, and fell out of it into an inverted spin. I'm going to say that was unintentional, especially at the low altitude at which with tumble was executed. It looked (and sounded) to me like he chopped the power as the first step of his emergency recovery procedure, got the spin stopped, and then over amp'ed the pull to recover before he had flying speed. The secondary stall was uncoordinated and spun him upright to the left into the ground.

If he was mentally behind due to the upset, then the ground rush recovering that low would have to have been overpowering mentally. Low and slow and a hard pull - not good. All speculation though. Maybe the rudder got jammed on the recovery. We'll probably never know.
 
Horrible! Why did it take so painfully long for the fire truck to arrive? The first vehicle was there in 25 sec. The fire truck took almost 2 minutes before the first burst of water hit the airplane...
 
PittsDriver said:
He did a tumble, and fell out of it into an inverted spin. I'm going to say that was unintentional, especially at the low altitude at which with tumble was executed. It looked (and sounded) to me like he chopped the power as the first step of his emergency recovery procedure, got the spin stopped, and then over amp'ed the pull to recover before he had flying speed. The secondary stall was uncoordinated and spun him upright to the left into the ground.

If he was mentally behind due to the upset, then the ground rush recovering that low would have to have been overpowering mentally. Low and slow and a hard pull - not good. All speculation though. Maybe the rudder got jammed on the recovery. We'll probably never know.
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Remember, even at that short distance, there is a delay between what you see and what you hear. I'm not so sure it wasn't the engine loosing fuel and cutting out that didn't precipitate the spin. He does appear out of control, hard for me to tell since that's kind of the point of the maneuver, and that may be what lead to a fuel unport. The things that makes me suspicious is that with my limited acro experience and training, I would have been slamming the throttle forwards as reaction much earlier than I hear the engine start to come in so I figure he would have been too. Then there is the timing of the engine coming back in just as he was establishing positive Gs again combined with the weak pick up note of the engine like it was just getting the air bled out and coming back online as he spun the final time.

As you say though, we'll probably never know, and either way the result is still a damn shame.
 
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Henning said:
Very sad indeed.... I came across this video (This video is of the crash) and it had excellent sound and I wondered, "I see him recovering, but I don't hear him recovering. Just before he spun as he was pulling out you could hear the engine burp like he came in with the throttle but the fuel didn't come past the first bit. When the power failed to come through as he was pulling he accelerated stalled and spun with a double down vector. Pretty brutal, thankfully (if such a thing can be said) it would have been instantaneous and he did not suffer to burn to death.
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This a very sad for sure.... As Henning said.... He did not suffer at all..:sad::sad::sad::sad:

Ben.
 
I know it's not the greatest time or place for this comment, but who are those completely inane announcers for airshows and where do they find them?

"The horizontally opposed engine was a "relatively recent" invention."?!

Someone please just turn off their mics and let them just *think* they're talking to the crowd, for cryin' out loud. No wonder I find the air boss frequency and stuff an earpiece in my ear...

While I was trying to watch (and listen) for the things mentioned above, I wanted to mute instead.
 
denverpilot said:
I know it's not the greatest time or place for this comment, but who are those completely inane announcers for airshows and where do they find them?

"The horizontally opposed engine was a "relatively recent" invention."?!

Someone please just turn off their mics and let them just *think* they're talking to the crowd, for cryin' out loud. No wonder I find the air boss frequency and stuff an earpiece in my ear...

While I was trying to watch (and listen) for the things mentioned above, I wanted to mute instead.
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The guy doing most of the talking is our local newschopper celebrity pilot - a really good guy and a real ambassador of GA to the general public. Don't know who the other "color commentator" is.
 
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denverpilot said:
I know it's not the greatest time or place for this comment, but who are those completely inane announcers for airshows and where do they find them?

"The horizontally opposed engine was a "relatively recent" invention."?!
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Well, it is a "relatively recent" invention. What piston aircraft engine has been invented since the opposed engine besides converted auto engines? Before the opposed it was radials, inlines and vee types. Then the opposed in the late '30s? and not much since then.

Dan
 
Dan Thomas said:
Well, it is a "relatively recent" invention. What piston aircraft engine has been invented since the opposed engine besides converted auto engines? Before the opposed it was radials, inlines and vee types. Then the opposed in the late '30s? and not much since then.

Dan
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I'm pretty sure one of the German factories in WWII used a Wankel at least in trials. The US Navy has spark plug Wankel outboards burning the "One Fuel" standard JP whatever it is....
 
I know Johnny. I like to say he stole my job from me back in '85 when I was flying traffic watch. That is when he started doing it himself. Made the radio station an offer they couldn't refuse. And an empire was born.
 
Okay sounds like he's a local so I get it if he's not used to doing airshows... No biggie.

The 1930s is a bit too long ago to be called "recent" history though. There was a whole World War and a few others after that. That's stretching "recent" pretty far. ;)
 
denverpilot said:
Okay sounds like he's a local so I get it if he's not used to doing airshows... No biggie.
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I think he's done this airshow for many years. He's also used to visiting local schools (flying into their parking lots or football fields) and talking with the kids about flying. I cut him some slack if it sounds like he's talking down to a lower level, since he usually is. I don't know who was in the booth with him, or how the conversation about 'round engines' got started.
 
FlySince9 said:
Horrible! Why did it take so painfully long for the fire truck to arrive? The first vehicle was there in 25 sec. The fire truck took almost 2 minutes before the first burst of water hit the airplane...
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Not that it would have mattered in this crash, but I agree -- their response time was awful.
 
2 minutes? I personally think two minutes is pretty darned good. Unless they are on continuous alert, it is going to take some time to get things wound up.

I don't know where the accident happened in relation to the fire house. But, at 60 miles an hour, it takes one minute to go a mile. Add one minute to realize something bad happened and to get suited up and on the truck, I think two minutes is about as good as it can get unless the accident happened just outside the fire house.

But that is just MY opinion.
 
Greg Bockelman said:
2 minutes? I personally think two minutes is pretty darned good. Unless they are on continuous alert, it is going to take some time to get things wound up.

I don't know where the accident happened in relation to the fire house. But, at 60 miles an hour, it takes one minute to go a mile. Add one minute to realize something bad happened and to get suited up and on the truck, I think two minutes is about as good as it can get unless the accident happened just outside the fire house.

But that is just MY opinion.
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There are some real considerations here. Anyone remember the Italian team that crashed at Ramstein back in the day? If I recall correctly, the collision hit the standby rescue helicopter and it's pilot later died.

Emergency crews have to be a safe distance off of the runway in case something like this goes wrong, and they are probably strategically placed to protect spectators in the event of something going wrong, so yes, it probably takes 10-30 seconds just to have them rolling. Then they have to get to the scene. It would be nice if the crews were already suited up, but I can't imagine them being forced to stay in those hot suits all day, so you can figure another 30 seconds for suiting up. I figure it would've been nicer to have them there about 30 seconds sooner, but in this case, it probably made no difference.

Ryan
 
But, at 60 miles an hour, it takes one minute to go a mile.
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and thats if you start at 60mph. They had to accelerate from a stop, and as powerful as a firetruck is, I don't think they are 0-60 in 10 seconds.
The thing about witnessing an accident is things feel very, very slow. I thought 2mins response time was reasonable. They can't position trucks along the runway every 300' with hoses running at every show.
 
2 1/2 minutes is about as good as it gets.

"This call has been holding an hour" is very commonly heard on Public Safety dispatch channels these days.

I had dinner at a restaurant this evening near KAPA and the Station 35 crew, the guys who have and know how to use, the crash-rescue truck (which was donated by a multi-millionaire to the South Metro Fire District, or they wouldn't even have one), were at least seven to nine minutes away from runway-environment center while they are dinner. And they did not bring the crash-rescue vehicle. (They did have the ladder, the Paramedic ambulance, and a pumper all in the lot out front, carefully parked so they couldn't be blocked in.)

The fastest they could have been to the far end of Runway 17 L/R from there, geared up and ready to go, would have been 12 minutes, I'd hazard a guess.

This is a normal crew with normal behavior. I have no complaint. My point is...

Even in a "survivable" crash with fire...at almost any airport, even well-equipped... with crash-rescue gear and people who know how to use it... If you aren't mobile and don't get yourself out, or put the fire out yourself, you're dead.

The truck is amazing by the way. I never realized crash-rescue vehicles these days are outfitted with their own infrared and radar. Reason? Survivors usually end up in the grass, right where the fire truck needs to roll to get to the burning wreckage. Smoke obscuring you lying in the grass unconscious to the driver can easily mean your day ends by being run over by a 20 ton truck after surviving an airplane crash.

The amount of foam the thing can put down at a distance from the top turret and also an under-body system to cut a swath through a grass or fuel fire behind it so other rescue vehicles can follow it into a wall of fire, is downright impressive.
 
denverpilot said:
2 1/2 minutes is about as good as it gets.

"This call has been holding an hour" is very commonly heard on Public Safety dispatch channels these days.
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Police report calls hold for an hour. Fire calls do not. Two minutes seems like an eternity, but it's a good response.

HOWEVER

Without being there or seeing it on video, it sounded to me, from the staccato bursts of electronic airhorn, that some responding units were not on the flightline, and had to clear their way through the crowd to respond. Someone who was there can validate if this was the case.

At wings over Houston, the CFR assets are in a fenced in pen on the crowd line, and have no obstructions to entering the ramp.

In this particular instance the crash itself did not appear survivable, and if it was, the burns would have finished the job within a few days. Nothing CFR could have done different in this case that would have made a difference short of the guy crashing 100 feet from where the crash trucb was parked.
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
and thats if you start at 60mph. They had to accelerate from a stop, and as powerful as a firetruck is, I don't think they are 0-60 in 10 seconds.
The thing about witnessing an accident is things feel very, very slow. I thought 2mins response time was reasonable. They can't position trucks along the runway every 300' with hoses running at every show.
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The CFR trucks I've climbed in/over/around carried 2000-4000 gallons of water, some had dual engines and needed both to accelerate from 0-60 in 60 seconds.
 
RyanShort1 said:
There are some real considerations here. Anyone remember the Italian team that crashed at Ramstein back in the day? If I recall correctly, the collision hit the standby rescue helicopter and it's pilot later died.

Emergency crews have to be a safe distance off of the runway in case something like this goes wrong, and they are probably strategically placed to protect spectators in the event of something going wrong, so yes, it probably takes 10-30 seconds just to have them rolling. Then they have to get to the scene. It would be nice if the crews were already suited up, but I can't imagine them being forced to stay in those hot suits all day, so you can figure another 30 seconds for suiting up. I figure it would've been nicer to have them there about 30 seconds sooner, but in this case, it probably made no difference.

Ryan
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Pretty accurate, you cannot stand around all summer day in your turnout kit, you'd die of heat prostration. The gear dons pretty quick, but it does take a moment. The response time was pretty good really.
 
Doggtyred said:
Without being there or seeing it on video, it sounded to me, from the staccato bursts of electronic airhorn, that some responding units were not on the flightline, and had to clear their way through the crowd to respond. Someone who was there can validate if this was the case.
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No crews had to clear their way through the crowd. The crash trucks came from quite a distance away. There were sirens in the distance within seconds - the horns and sirens that sounded like they were in the crowd were some other emergency vehicles that were parked near the planes, crowd, and fuel. They did ask the crowd to clear away from one of the gates.

The first two fire engines one from the N (the yellow/green) and another from the S (the red) got there within seconds of each other. The first two vehicles to reach the scene were either personal or airport vehicles that were stationed at the start area and had a much shorter drive. Watching it all, it did seem like the crash trucks took a long time, but after a video review I don't think it would have been possible for them to get there any quicker.
 
Greg Bockelman said:
2 minutes? I personally think two minutes is pretty darned good. Unless they are on continuous alert, it is going to take some time to get things wound up.

I don't know where the accident happened in relation to the fire house. But, at 60 miles an hour, it takes one minute to go a mile. Add one minute to realize something bad happened and to get suited up and on the truck, I think two minutes is about as good as it can get unless the accident happened just outside the fire house.

But that is just MY opinion.
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Yeah I agree Greg. That was a very fast response. I don't know why the attack on the fire crew. Even they instantly appeared it would not have made an difference in this case.
 
Doggtyred said:
Police report calls hold for an hour. Fire calls do not.
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Budgets keep falling. Fire won't hit an hour, but it'll get worse in most areas hit by budgetary problems.

The example was to say that Police are already having to prioritize out to hours... Most folks don't realize this.

Have heard Denver run out of available ambulances including third party contractors, numerous times on weekends and have to pull an ambulance on a non-life-threatening run to take a more serious patient. Dispatchers know the juggling rules but are slowly running out of resources. Two multi-car accidents can run Denver out of ambulances in one call, most weeknights.

Point was, response time for anything in Public Safety that's less than 15 minutes is very good.

You're on your own prior to that in most cities. Get out in a rural area, longer.
 
denverpilot said:
Budgets keep falling. Fire won't hit an hour, but it'll get worse in most areas hit by budgetary problems.

The example was to say that Police are already having to prioritize out to hours... Most folks don't realize this.

Have heard Denver run out of available ambulances including third party contractors, numerous times on weekends and have to pull an ambulance on a non-life-threatening run to take a more serious patient. Dispatchers know the juggling rules but are slowly running out of resources. Two multi-car accidents can run Denver out of ambulances in one call, most weeknights.

Point was, response time for anything in Public Safety that's less than 15 minutes is very good.

You're on your own prior to that in most cities. Get out in a rural area, longer.
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Damn, you serious? Why is that? What happens on weekends? Are you telling me there's only about 20 ambulances available for Denver?
 
Henning said:
Damn, you serious? Why is that? What happens on weekends? Are you telling me there's only about 20 ambulances available for Denver?
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20? P'shaw. Most nights on weekends there's five to seven city ambulances and roughly four private ones, if that.

That and two police-operated drunk-wagons/paddy-wagons, "Scout 1" and "Scout 2".

I've never counted 20 discreet callsigns on the EMS "frequency". (It's an EDACS system, so it's really a trunk group/ID.) They post them at numbered locations and they all check in on/off post, so tracking isn't too difficult. They do utilize in-vehicle data terminals for some of that admin traffic though, but a written log or a good memory for numbers during a shift-change and you can get a pretty good count as a remote spectator.

Note: This is Denver City & County, not the entire Metro area. Every suburb has their own resources and DIA is far enough out of the city, they have their own Police and EMS out there that don't interact directly with the main District-based dispatch channels.

Downtown Denver in the renovated "Lower Downtown" or "LoDo" (pronounced Low Dough) area is loaded with bars. It's also home to Coors Field and the Pepsi Center isn't far. People go Downtown at night. Denver Center for the Performing Arts and the Denver Convention Center are also packed into that general area, as well as Elitch Gardens. "Upper" Downtown along the 16th Street Pedestrian Mall is also busy with crowds.

Anytime after about 22:00 down there is a mad-house for Public Safety folks.

Denver Health Medical Center goes on "ER Divert" pretty regularly too, adding significantly to run times to go to other hospitals.

The book "The Knife and Gun Club" covers pretty adequately why DHMC (formerly Denver General) is a really good Level 1 trauma facility.

Add a good gang fight to the fray and Denver starts calling in meat-wagons via Mutual Aid with the surrounding suburban districts.

It's entertaing listening, but I'm weird that way. The biggest "aww, bummer" call was the Ambulance that blew a tire two blocks out on a heart-attack call. Sometimes it's just not a good day to have a heart attack. :D

The second Ambulance didn't call for the Coroner, and they rolled non-emergent to DHMC, so it sounded like the victim was stable. Poor dude. ;)
 
I don't listen to scanners too much anymore, but I remember hearing Houston Fire Dept get down to 2-3 ambulances for the whole damn city - hundreds of square miles and millions of people.

I've been dispatching local ems in a town of 200,000 and run out of trucks and then get called on a full cardiac arrest.

The average Joe out there would be mortified to know how often their locale gets to system status ZERO- no assets available for EMS.

It's worsened by overcrowded ER's that have no place for new incoming patients, so the patient waits on the EMS gurney with the crew.

The solution is costly. But that's not what people want to hear.
 
Doggtyred said:
The solution is costly. But that's not what people want to hear.
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If there was a way to eliminate the calls from folks who have a headache or back pain and want to skip the line at the ER by calling a 'taxi with lights', EMS resources would probably go a lot further.
 
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