5% per year

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Colonel Sanders
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5% per year

Post by Colonel Sanders »

I know Jerzy doesn't agree, but we are well
on track for the yearly five fatal airshow
accidents in 2014. The Zivko, the Stearman
and now the Yak 55. Three so far, and it's
only June 1st.

Try 5% per year on for size for 10 or 20 years,
given an estimate of around 100 actual working
airshow pilots.
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Re: 5% per year

Post by photofly »

What are you doing to make sure you aren't one of them?
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Re: 5% per year

Post by digits_ »

photofly wrote:What are you doing to make sure you aren't one of them?
He waits untill the airshow gets cancelled before he flies. That way, if something happens it doesn't count as an airshow accident :mrgreen:
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Colonel Sanders
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Re: 5% per year

Post by Colonel Sanders »

What are you doing to make sure you aren't one of them?
A sensible question, given that some of those
dead pilots were far better pilots than I will
ever be.

There is the theory, and the practical. While
in other forms of aviation you can be pretty
shoddy at one or the other, you had best master
both if you are going to do aerobatics close to
the ground. For example, you must use the
"top gate" for downward-looping maneuvers.
And you had best practice at least five times
a week.

Another (empirical) angle to come at it with, is
to propose that there are no new airshow accidents.
Therefore you can prepare for virtually any accident
that could happen to you, by reviewing (and learning
the lessons) of old accidents. In fact, this is required
in the ICAS SAC ground portion.

Another worthwhile lesson is that there is no
"checklist" or "do-list" or "how-to-fly book" to
carry and refer to, while you are doing low
altitude (formation) aerobatics. While it is
possible, I don't know of a single pilot who
does, or ever did. At this point, the light bulb
goes on, and you realize that your brains, not
your printed holy bible, is what keeps you alive
when you are in an airplane.

The interesting thing is that lessons learned
from this particularly hazardous form of aviation
are extremely unpopular when applied to more
mundane applications, which I find fascinating.
Your viewpoints are considered extreme and
unforgiving, which makes a certain amount of
sense, considering where they came from.
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Colonel Sanders
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Re: 5% per year

Post by Colonel Sanders »

Been watching (and re-watching) the Stevens Point
video. See "Stalled Aerobatic Maneuvers" in

www.pittspecials.com/articles/aerobatics_low.htm
Until you are completely comfortable recovering from any spin, you should NOT fly out of control maneuvers down low, because you are betting your life that you will be lucky.
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Re: 5% per year

Post by looproll »

Really sad to hear about Mr. Cowden.

It looks like he was in an inverted (flat) spin, recovered low, pulled hard, stalled and entered a secondary spin.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... rshow.html
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Re: 5% per year

Post by cgzro »

Yes, very sad and surprising, controlling a positive snap is not something you'd expect an air show pilot to have trouble with. He exited the spin with a few hundred feet to spare then pulled hard and snapped left, stopped inverted and pulled into the ground.
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Re: 5% per year

Post by Colonel Sanders »

http://www.pittspecials.com/articles/aerobatics_low.htm
I should mention that whenever you recover from a torque roll or tailslide or tumble with the nose pointing straight down – it doesn’t get any better than that - the best recovery technique is to unstall the wing by applying full power and getting some airspeed before you haul back on the stick. A common newbie mistake in this situation is to panic because of the unusual view out the front, and haul back on the stick too soon, and stall the aircraft, which can result in mushing the aircraft into the ground. Don’t do that, either.

Again, I cannot emphasize enough the importance of lots of experience and familiarity and skill before you start doing aerobatics down low. Please don’t hurry, and kill yourself. The rest of us find it depressing when you do that.
I wonder who the other 2 are going to be, this year?
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Re: 5% per year

Post by Jerz »

Yes, it’s been a tragic start of the season. Eddie’s death hits especially hard, as I knew him quite well.
CS, I don’t dispute the risk of the airshow flying. I never did. I don’t believe 5% is the number, more like 1.5-2%, but regardless, it’s high. Too high.

IIRC, I disagreed with your premise of exposure being directly proportional to odds of dying. I believe the opposite is true: more experience (exposure) makes safer pilots. Same goes for strait and level pilots. Or teenage drivers. Talk to any insurance adjustor.
I believe that having flown in 100s of airshows lowers your odds of crashing. Same as having 10 000hrs in your strait and level “driving” log book. There is no guarantee, of course – Eddie is a classic example.

Low level aerobatics is one of the few, still legal, brutally honest activities – you f**k up, you’re going to die. No replay button, no “learning experience”, at least for the individual involved, no CC button to cover your back side. I find this strangely refreshing in this modern age of safety and lack of responsibility. And no, I don’t have a death wish. I love my life.

In the latest Yak accident GLOC was probably a factor. Prolonged negative Gs (inverted spin) to positive G pull – physiologically the worst case scenario. Again you learn to recognise and deal with those with experience. I do vertical inside /outside 8 from the surface in my routine. Simple, yet elegant figure, but potentially deadly for the unaware – same GLOC, or “sleeper” characteristics . Should I stop doing it? Don’t think so, but I need to be ready for it. Safety comes with experience, or exposure, both recent (G tolerance) as well as prior – I know what to expect and how to deal with it. Exposure/experience makes me safer.

Yak 55M has lots of power/static trust, but very little wing. It will fly out of low energy condition, but you can’t be pulling Gs. This situation was recoverable – the nose was above the horizon at probably 150-200ft. Even with no speed and downward energy vector, Yak would flown out of it , if it wasn’t for the secondary stall/snap. Again, I believe the GLOC was a factor in pilot’s mistake.

At the very beginning of my airshow flying, I was starting my routine with multiple turn inverted flat spin. I was flying unlimited monoplane and felt that at 500ft level there was not much I could do to impress the crowds. I was talked out of it by a very experienced airshow pilot. I disagreed with him at the time (just a simple spin, right?), but I was smart enough to take his advice. I still don’t do airshow spins. They are such energy wasters. Cockiness/pride will kill you in aviation before exposure/experience will. So fly safe guys and fly lots. Expose yourself to danger that aviation is. Lets prove CS wrong this year.
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Re: 5% per year

Post by Big Pistons Forever »

I think a factor is the airshow ante gets upped every year. The aerobatic acts are getting more and more extreme and the requirement to WOW the crowd is IMO pushing everyone to shave the margins that much more.

Something is wrong when a full career as an airshow pilot is an almost certain death sentence as the statistics show that almost no one survives to retire.
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Re: 5% per year

Post by Jerz »

Something is wrong when a full career as an airshow pilot is an almost certain death sentence as the statistics show that almost no one survives to retire.
BPF, as I was unsuccessfully trying to show in my post, the "certain death" scenario is not true. Each air show performance is an independent sample, therefore your odds of dying remain at 1.5-2% (my numbers), or 5% according to CS. Not great, I agree, but definitely not a certain death.
I know many retired airshow pilots.

Your suggestion about pilots pushing envelope more from year to year is also not correct, at least since 2005/2007. After Masters of Disaster and later Bulldog's crashes ICAS came down hard on that and pilots believed to be dangerous have hard time finding shows,. The bottom line - crashes are not good for business - usually the event gets cancelled.
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Re: 5% per year

Post by Colonel Sanders »

I believe that having flown in 100s of airshows lowers your odds of crashing
That's very slippery. It makes sense, at first to
think that experience makes you safer, and should
increase your margin of safety. But it doesn't work
out that way.

A good example of this is when GM installed ABS
brakes as standard equipment on a car line, many
years ago. All the statisticians were quivering, because
this was a wonderful, large sample size of an increase
in safety. Except it didn't work out that way. The
accident rate was exactly the same, with ABS. Why?

When people looked closely, they found that people
with ABS started using it routinely, and drove deeper
into the corners.

They assumed the same level of risk, with the better
equipment.

Exactly the same is true, of increased skill. Pilots
start flying harder and lower as their skill increases,
flying to the same level of risk as when they started.

This is in fact codified into the ICAS ACE Manual,
where the newbies start at 800, then 500, then
250, then surface, as they get more experience.

Jim Leroy is the poster child for this. Jesus, he
flew low and hard. So is Eddie Andreini. And
remember Jimmy Franklin and Bobby Younkin.

The list goes on, and on, of really good airshow
pilots, that are dead now. And not just during
airshows - they often die during aerobatics NOT
at airshows (Paul Lopez, Freddy Cabanas) which
you don't count towards the 5%, but they are still
dead - or even non-aerobatic (but very high risk)
flight (e.g. Eric Beard).

All of these guys routinely flew with a level of
risk so high, it would make 99% of the pilots of
AvCan run screaming from the room. And sooner
or later, it catches up to you. Convergence of the
Central Limit Theorem.
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Re: 5% per year

Post by Jerz »

A good example of this is when GM installed ABS
brakes as standard equipment on a car line, many
years ago. All the statisticians were quivering, because
this was a wonderful, large sample size of an increase
in safety. Except it didn't work out that way. The
accident rate was exactly the same, with ABS. Why?

When people looked closely, they found that people
with ABS started using it routinely, and drove deeper
into the corners.
This is not a good example at all.
The ABS doesn‘t reduce the stopping distance over the threshold braking technique, regardless what's in a car brochure with glossy pictures . Any race car driver knows that. As a matter of fact, under reduced coefficient of friction condition, ABS makes stopping distances longer. Many high end European cars had a switch turning the ABS off for that very reason, before ABS got incorporated into vehicle stability control systems.

What ABS provides is control under panic braking. You can steer the car around the obstacle with break pedal all the way to the floor. Unfortunately this is not natural reaction and friendly car dealer doesn’t explain that to your average soccer mom.

The government will give you a driver license in Canada without ever requiring you to demonstrate the threshold braking, control under panic stop conditions, or any other basics of high performance driving. Safety first...


Yes, flying air shows can be dangerous, but lets look at FACTS, not speculations or manipulated “statistics”, and stop the AVCANADA hysteria. I don’t have reliable data from the rest of the world, so I will provide ones for the North America:

-more than 10 million people attend U.S. air shows every year. The last spectator casualties were in Colorado in 1951. This safety record is an envy of any other motor sport.

- there are typically just two or three air show accidents per year in the United States and Canada.

-there have been 75 fatal air show accidents since 1986, average of 2.86 per year.

-each year, there are approximately 325 air shows in the North America. That translates to about 8,000 individual performances. Assuming optimistically that average performer flies 5 shows a year gives 0.17% probability of fatal crash. Less that I thought myself by order of 10, probably due to much bigger number of pilots then listed on ICAS Perforers list. That makes sense since you don't have to be ICAS member to perform at an airshows and obviously many are not, including myself this year.

-there is no 5% accident rate catching up to you, no “certain death”. Each flight is an independent random variable. Number of performances flown does not affect you odds in negative way. Contrary,
I believe the opposite is true - experience makes you a safer pilot.
Even if it wasn't , then flying more performances then average (more independent random samples) would only increased concentration of values closer to arithmetical average of 0.17%, as shown by cited Convergence of Central Limit Theorem.


From ICAS web side:

“Because of the rules and regulations in place in the United States and Canada, it is highly unlikely that spectators will ever be involved in an air show aircraft accident. Since current regulations were put into effect in 1952, there has never been a spectator fatality in an air show aircraft accident in North America.
There are a number of safeguards in place to ensure that air show pilots are qualified and experienced, but, despite these rules and the close attention paid to safety issues, accidents sometimes happen. Accidents happen in car racing. Accidents happen in thoroughbred horse racing. Accidents happen in high school football games. And accidents happen in the air show business. The pilots who perform at air shows understand the inherent risks of air show flying. They do everything they can to minimize that danger. Of those, a very, very small number experience some sort of problem. In some years, the industry has had no accidents at all. In other years, there might be three, four or five. In the last ten years, the North American air show industry has had only one year in which we had more than four fatal accidents.”


Any fatal accident is a tragedy, especially one involving your friend, but the fact is that air show accidents are relatively rare. However they are dramatic and are nearly always captured on videotape and plastered all over youtube.
The air show accidents receive widespread publicity in the media, no matter how irrelevant to general population. It would be much more beneficial to an average American to show on CNN hart attacks due to overeating hamburgers, but somehow we get bombarded with images of airplane crashes instead. Whatever sells, I guess.

CS, please stop steering the pot. Some youngsters are very impressionable and easily scared. Are you after the “bad boy” image or something? I thought that only worked on teenage girls? You are trying to give a black eye air show industry and aerobatics in general. WTF? Don't we have enough "support" from your beloved TC?
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Re: 5% per year

Post by Colonel Sanders »

I guess I'm not very good at PR.

Even though other people think it's morbid,
I like to carefully review accidents, so that
I don't make the same mistake. And perhaps
other people won't make the same mistake,
if the lessons learned are passed on.

I know that one can choose to distort the
statistics, and I find it distasteful.

For example, the IAC has claimed for a long
time that aerobatic contests are safe because
no one dies at a contest - until Viki Cruz (President
of the IAC) died at the WAC. But that happened
in England, so the IAC can continue to claim that
no one died at a contest - in the USA.

Plenty of people die practicing for contests,
and flying to and from a contest is generally
more hazardous than the aerobatics at high
altitude at the contest, but in the interest of
massaging statistics, those accidents "don't count".

Again, I find that distasteful. Rather than pretending
that Viki didn't die, I prefer to learn why she died,
so that I don't make the same mistake.

I know you don't agree with me on this Jerzy,
but a lot of people don't act as if aviation can
be dangerous. They treat it with contempt.
This is especially true of aerobatics.

Aviation is different than tennis, or golf. You
screw up, you can die. A lot like riding a TT
motorcycle.

If you choose to participate in such an activity,
it behooves you to learn as much about it as
you possibly can, even if it upsets TC.

Specifically, you want to review (not play down)
all the accidents, so that you learn the lessons
from them, that someone paid dearly to learn.

I honestly believe that there are no new sources
of accidents in aviation. Therefore you are foolish
if you do not carefully educate yourself about them.
And, if you are an instructor, you are negligent if
you do not teach your students those lessons.

An old saying is that those who choose to not learn
the lessons of history, are doomed to relive it.

Knowledge of previous airshow accidents is in fact
required in the ground portion of the ICAS SAC
evaluation - see the ICAS ACE manual.

At the risk of upsetting you Jerzy, one lesson I
would like to pass on to the youngsters here is
that aerobatics at low altitude is terribly unforgiving
of mistakes, as Bill Cowden showed us.

Please don't do aerobatics at low altitude, no matter
how tempting - especially in a non-aerobatic airplane.
I know it's a thrill, but even licenced practitioners in
aerobatic airplanes regularly screw up and die, doing it.
How well is an amateur going to do at it? Death is a
high price to pay for a thrill that you will have forgotten
next week.

Image

This kind of perspective is often lacking in youngsters.
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Re: 5% per year

Post by AirFrame »

Jerz wrote:
When people looked closely, they found that people
with ABS started using it routinely, and drove deeper
into the corners.
This is not a good example at all.
The ABS doesn‘t reduce the stopping distance over the threshold braking technique, regardless what's in a car brochure with glossy pictures . Any race car driver knows that.
ABS reduces the stopping distance not because it's better than a proper threshold braking technique, but because it's better than the average Joe driving down the road. Very few drivers on the road know what threshold braking is. But when you panic and jam your foot down, ABS will make sure you don't slide.
As a matter of fact, under reduced coefficient of friction condition, ABS makes stopping distances longer.
More accurately, when compared to proper threshold braking technique, under *any* coefficient of friction, ABS makes stopping distances longer. When compared to average Joe driver, under *any* coefficient of friction, ABS makes stopping distances shorter.
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Re: 5% per year

Post by Jerz »

Very few drivers on the road know what threshold braking is. But when you panic and jam your foot down, ABS will make sure you don't slide.
Unfortunately, average driver in N. America will stomp on the breaks, close his/her eyes and drive strait into the obstacle , regardless of the ABS allowing to steer safely around it.
N. American drivers are some of the worst I have seen in the World. Not a big surprise, when you consider what it takes to obtain a license. However "for safety" we will give you $500 ticket for driving 15km/h over the ridiculous speed limit. But if you want to spill hot coffee in you crotch, that's OK, we don't mind at all. Come to our drive thru. Anybody here earned European driver license? Tell us how "easy" that was.
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Re: 5% per year

Post by Jerz »

Back to the air shows/aerobatics.

Yes, flying air shows can be dangerous. The low level aerobatics don’t leave much room for errors. We all know that. I’ve known many dead pilots mentioned above and some were my dear friends. How about in their memory, we do something they would want us to do: instead of debating wisdom of outlawing air shows and possibly aerobatics all together, as suggested some months ago on avcanada, we'll look at the other side of the coin:

-air shows are often the reasons people get involved in aviation.

-air shows are the best recruiting tool for the air force. I am aware that many graduate of Canadian communist educational system on this board believe we don’t need military anymore. However I had a misfortune of being born on the wrong side of the iron curtain, experienced the workers paradise first hand, and believe something quite opposite. Feel pretty strong about it too...

-air shows provide tens of millions with affordable family entertainment. It is cheaper than taking kids to the movies.

-air show industry provides hundreds of people with employment. The best kind there is: you get paid for doing what you love.

And the other coin of aerobatics:

-5 hrs of basic aerobatic / upset recovery training will make you 10 times better pilot then thousands of hrs of boredom at FL350 on the autopilot.

- you will learn to control the aircraft through it’s whole flight envelope. Strait and level flying to aerobatics is like baby crawling to running – both will get you from A to B, one possibly safer, but... I would rather run

-competition aerobatics will provide the thrill and excitement of flight which got you into aviation in the first place . The romance and adventure which is often lost after short few years in strait and level flying, where you get paid to keep things boring.

-will provide you with endless challenge in pursuit of perfection of flight. Let’s face it, commercial aviation standards are set for the lowest common denominator. The Manuals/SOPs are written for the weakest pilot on the payroll to be able to do the job safely. If you are not one of them, in few short years you will be able to fly raw data ILS to minimums with engine on fire. There will be no challenge left. You will hate your job, get your frills somewhere else, or possibly develop depression, or hit the bottle, or worst, like so many do. Aerobatics will get you the fix of excitement in aviation.

-will provide you with a way to express yourself in three dimensions. There is a certain beauty in it.

-and IT IS FUN.
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Re: 5% per year

Post by FenderManDan »

AirFrame wrote:
Jerz wrote:
When people looked closely, they found that people
with ABS started using it routinely, and drove deeper
into the corners.
This is not a good example at all.
The ABS doesn‘t reduce the stopping distance over the threshold braking technique, regardless what's in a car brochure with glossy pictures . Any race car driver knows that.
ABS reduces the stopping distance not because it's better than a proper threshold braking technique, but because it's better than the average Joe driving down the road. Very few drivers on the road know what threshold braking is. But when you panic and jam your foot down, ABS will make sure you don't slide.
As a matter of fact, under reduced coefficient of friction condition, ABS makes stopping distances longer.
More accurately, when compared to proper threshold braking technique, under *any* coefficient of friction, ABS makes stopping distances longer. When compared to average Joe driver, under *any* coefficient of friction, ABS makes stopping distances shorter.
I got my drivers licence on this:
Image
You learn thing or two about threshold braking driving a government/driving school owned Y45 :rolleyes:
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Re: 5% per year

Post by Colonel Sanders »

Not sure if this guy was an airshow pilot or not:

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2014/06/28/plan ... eved-dead/
The pilot who was killed, James Edward Doyle, was the only person on-board.

Witnesses in the area told officials that Doyle was performing aerobatic maneuvers when the plane went down.
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Re: 5% per year

Post by swervin »

Colonel Sanders wrote:Not sure if this guy was an airshow pilot or not:

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2014/06/28/plan ... eved-dead/
The pilot who was killed, James Edward Doyle, was the only person on-board.

Witnesses in the area told officials that Doyle was performing aerobatic maneuvers when the plane went down.
Not yet, he planned to get into air show flying later this year. More info on the biplaneforum.com
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