Originally Posted by 43Inches
In the video below you can see the pilots scan approaching the target and the workload he is under, and then during the drop and recover there is a lot of flying happening... Imagine that with speed multiplied in a large jet.
We can't see the general terrain that CL 415 was operating in but in the absence of high terrain immediately before the drop area, there seems to be a lot of unnecessary, tight manoeuvring going on. In any case, if anybody attempted to do that "in a large jet", quite frankly, they'd be a fool.
Similarly, in WA, in an area where there doesn't appear to be any relevant terrain, they are doing tight descending turns at low speed just before the drop, and according to the FlightAware track, didn't do a dummy run first, just a fairly tight orbit to the west of the target area.
Originally Posted by TDRacer
IF it was pilot error and they either struck the ground or stalled trying to avoid ground contact, the critical visibility would have been what's below, not what's above. How would eyebrow windows help?
But if you're in a right turn, as these guys were, and the left-hand seater was flying, an eyebrow above the FO's head could be beneficial because you can see where you're turning towards, especially if it was a fairly obvious plume of smoke.