Yes. Weighing my words carefully. I'm guessing here, its looking like a terrible accident. Last night, I was actually watching a bit of foreign t.v. news and I thought it was some sort of horrible terrorist attack. My thoughts were distant about this today but seeing the news again tonight on france24.com it looks awful.
Do ppruners think (the UK military) practise and train enough to deal with this sort of horrendous event? Pre-air day I always thought we gave it a serious go, but also felt at times some of the key people on the base just went through the motions, and sort of kicked the training for it into the grass a little.
At Yeovilton, it was about year 2000, I recall a FA2 being delivered, and subsequently crashing, with the pilot ejecting not quite safely as it attempted to land on 27. The aircraft rolled onwards for quite a way, left the runway, decapitated an SF90 and then went past the front of the old ATC tower and hit a small concrete stub wall and came to rest. If it hadn't hit the stub wall knocking the nosewheel I dread to think what could have happened as it was pointing (as I recall) firmly at the green Lynx and green Sea-king line of...707 or 848 NAS (can't remember).
Always closer to disaster in the FAA than we sometimes wanted to acknowledge.
Does anyone else remember that? I always thought the gods were relatively kind that day..seeing the news reminded me about it again.