A Wing and a Prayer: Safety Concerns Over Red Bull's 55-Year Old Seaplane
Popular Marketing Tool Twice Grounded Over Concern about Aged Wings Failing
By ASA ESLOCKER, JOSEPH RHEE and ERIC LONGABARDI
March 30, 2009
The 55-year old seaplane used to market the Red Bull energy drink at major sporting events and air shows was decommissioned and disposed of by the Coast Guard in 1976 because they considered it no longer safe to fly given the age of its wings.
Some say 55-year-old seaplane used to market the energy drink is unsafe.
But it flies over the heads of hundreds of thousands of people a year under an "experimental airworthiness certificate" granted by the FAA in 2008.
In a written response to questions, a Red Bull spokesperson, Patrice Radden, said: "Neither Red Bull nor any of its pilots or flight crews have or would operate an aircraft that is known to be unsafe or in an unsafe manner."
Although the FAA certificate specifically requires the Red Bull plane to "avoid densely populated areas," the plane flew over festivities surrounding the Super Bowl last month in Tampa.
The aircraft is a Grumman-built HU-16E "Flying Albatross."
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"It's terribly unsafe because the wing could fall off at any time," said Bill McNease, a former FAA safety inspector who helped initiate an earlier investigation of the plane when he was with the FAA in 2006.
"The long wing versions of this airplane have a definite, if you want to call it, drop dead time. When they reach a certain amount of flight hours, that's it," said McNease in an interview with ABC News Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross for Good Morning America.
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