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Old 13th May 2015, 07:31
  #86 (permalink)  
Legalapproach
 
Join Date: May 2001
Location: London
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They are not quite as black and white as it may appear:
1) He had been taught to loop in a Chipmunk. He had been shown a loop in the Tiger and had demonstrated one himself to the instructor. He had not had further aerobatic training but did not fly other aeros - only the loop.
2) He had spin training (not on the Tiger) but had been shown a spin on the Tiger during his 5hrs + of check out.
3) He had received spin training and was checked out for spinning. His description to the AAIB was given at a time when he was still suffering the effects of life threatening injuries and was heavily medicated (the prosecution expert himself did not get it perfect when he gave the jury a description of spin recovery).
4) correct - but he gave the 3500 as "for example" referring to his spin training. When he had a loop demonstrated and then flew one himself in the Tiger it was done at about 2000' (the instructor's evidence).
5) During the interview he did state that a loop was not an aerobatic maneuver but then corrected himself.
6) I don't have the figure to hand - the height came from the GPS data and was subject to lag, averaging and margin of error. It was acknowledged that it was below 2000' but the passenger (a parachutist with military flying experience and currently training for a commercial pilots licence) gave evidence and said that he was not uncomfortable with the height.

As I say, they do not necessarily paint the full picture and the eye witness evidence was not thoroughly investigated. In fact a number of the witnesses did not describe it spinning from the top of the loop and certainly one of the eye witnesses said it pulled up and entered a spin (consistent with the pilot's account) and it did not look like a loop. In any event flight reconstruction showed that a replication of the pilot's reported control inputs cause the aircraft to flick into a spin and viewed from the ground this had the appearance (to an untrained observer) of a looping movement.
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