Hawker Hunter down at Shoreham
 

Twitter is full of reports of a Hunter down on the A27, two cyclists killed apparently, no news of the pilot yet. That's really sad for all concerned.

Pilot pulled from burning plane at Shoreham Airshow - BBC News

Pilot apperantley pulled from wreakage

Though why punters cant leave I fail to understand

Probably because the A27 may be closed ?

BBC News reporting the Hunter crashed 'across' the A27, hitting 'several vehicles'. Road is confirmed close din both directions, which does make access v difficult.

Photos and more:
 

just looked on Google Earth crashed at end of 02 so main exit from airfield is blocked and no other way out.

Sussex police quoted as saying "several casualties". This is a tragedy, I'm afraid. The reports of two cyclists killed and 4 cars hit are unconfirmed; it's not looking good though.

http://cdn1.24live.co/images/2015/08...0087545733.jpg

Stopping people leaving may release road space for emergency vehicles.
I believe this is standard practice.

Not quite the same the crash is within 100` of the exit road so no way out problaby debris over exit its self

When the Sea Fury had its mishap at Culdrose last year , all airshow civvy traffic was halted for at least 45 minutes in order to allow emergency vehicles to access the airfield. Guess the same may apply on the A27 as in the early stages of this incident , it is hard to immediately determine casualty numbers and collateral damage.

Telegraph shows a plane with marking WV372 and states that this is the same plane picture taken shortly before the crash.

Shoreham Air Show plane crash: major explosion after Hawker Hunter smashes into four cars - Live - Telegraph

Terrible - Thoughts are with all.

Video from the Airfield

https://twitter.com/1pianokid/status/635074692156665857

If it is WV372 then it's G-BXFI which is a T7 as reported

There are now several videos showing the whole thing, all of which leave me feeling rather sick. This is a grim accident; I'm disinclined to post any links to the videos, they'll no doubt be repeated for quite some time in the media.

Just arrived back from Shoreham (relatively local to us). From a high vantage point we could see the A27 has stationary traffic for several miles east of the incident, and being familiar with the airport it's going to be a long, long job getting the spectators off the premises (the traffic lights at the north entrance being where the incident is). Fortunately we were on a motorbike, and were able to leave the area quickly (just as several roads were being closed to all but emergency vehicles).

By a stroke of luck we decided at the last momennt to spectate from the hill opposite (best place to watch XH558 from anyway); if we'd gone to the show we'd have been queuing at exactly the wrong place and time.

Casualties on the ground
 

There is video appearing now on twitter mobile that confirms the aircraft come down onto the A27, serious casualties on the ground seem inevitable.

I suspect that this is going to have an effect on this type of show in future - I wonder if safety is going to have to be completely reviewed after this tragic event.

I will say again, my thoughts are with those on the ground.

I do fear this will raise the question the suitability of performing aerobatics with vintage aircraft.

I have my fingers crossed that there are no fatalities but it does seem unlikely

That's terrible.
That road looked very busy as well looking at traffic to the left of the video.

Seemed from the video like he just ran out of height... for whatever reason. Hopefully an AAIB report will shed more light on the facts.

That horrifying video isn't completely clear (on my screen, at least) but it does look like a pull up followed by a wingover to port, with not enough height for the recovery.


The A27 just there is always crowded on a Saturday afternoon so, yes, there will certainly have been vehicles hit. Terrible for everyone.

confirmed 7 killed by BBC just now.
Brighton Argus (local paper) has live news feed with links to twitter pics
Plane at Shoreham Air Show crashes into cars on A27 (From The Argus)

I know it's stating the obvious but had the impact been one second earlier or later he'd have ended up in a field...


Truly a grim reminder of how all of us are only ever a heartbeat away from death.

Not all of us do...
A truly terrible incident, and one that may well change the way airshows are conducted with regards to displays, certainly of non military aircraft/pilots. RIP to all involved in this tragedy.

This plane should never have been doing that over such a busy road though, period..

Witness unfortunatley (not on airfield but on Downs walking about a mile away waiting to see the Vulcan)

Aircraft arrived, pulled up rolled over the top. Thought bit low for that bearing in mind the downs.

Held the vertical descent probably looking at crowd line, then pulled slowly, realised he was a bit low and REALLY pulled into a quite high alpha. Looked away at that point realising what was going to happen.

POSSIBLY Heard the canopy and seat fire (seen/heard ejection seats before and the sharp crack/whoosh is recognisable) followed almost immediately by the impact. Looked back and HUGE fireball spreading across the landscape.

Just to point out the usual accident interpretations someone else commented (not to me) aircraft was on fire before impact. Im pretty sure it wasnt.

fox,
In the photo, the canopy appears to be hinged back. If the seat was used, surely it would not be like that?
DW

Airshow safety revisited................
 

Condolences to all those affected. Most sincerely. Pilot, spectators, passers-by, families and ALL those involved. What a tragedy!

We really need to take Airshow displays seriously in terms of safety and revisit safety 'buffers' and 'forensic' levels of pre-display planning. There certainly looks like (from the video) many clear-zone areas that could have been planned-in in the event of engine failure, certain control malfunctions at the pullout area of that loop.

In the meantime, condolences again to ALL those involved.

The canopy is attached and hinged open, the seat barrel/piston is not visible. The seat soes not appear to have been initiated.

I don't understand why an airshow is happening above a busy road. Surprised that this would be allowed in Britain.

Is that a flame out? The flash is not visible on videos taken from the Downs. You should send that to the AAIB so they can stop frame and analyse.

Playing back on youtube at 0.25x speed it looks like something much closer and out of focus such as a bird flying in front of the camera.

I managed to park it on that frame, it looks much closer than the aircraft and at a different angle to the path of the aircraft, It may be a bird or similar.

Here it it https://goo.gl/photos/YvP35foFgAZTY1aN6

JD

Not sure if youve seen this photo but its amazing more werent killed.

Imgur: The most awesome images on the Internet

From people that were there, it looked like a lack of power (slow to complete the roll) and not enough altitude. Out of speed, out of height.

I believe that there seems to be temporary lights in use at that junction, might have been furthermore fatalities, as it's hit right at the junction.

http://news.images.itv.com/image/fil...stream_img.jpg

And this taken one second before impact.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CNB_YNIWgAEH7Pj.jpg

The A27 is busy at most times but you can see in the remarkable image above that cars were stopped at temporary traffic lights with traffic slowing/stopped. In so far as can be seen, the aircraft crashed into the middle of the junction. Had the lights/roadworks not have been there - all vehicles would have been at regular speed and there would have been an enormous concertina into the crash site by many vehicles.

I can say there are no roadworks. It is a traffic management design for the air show. It stops traffic from turning right when coming from the west travelling East. They also turn off the lights so no one stops. The queuing traffic is much further back before the junction into the airport.
If it had been a normal day the fatalities would have been so very much worse.

I hope at some point that all those sadly affected can find some peace.

259😔

Thanks JohnnyD for the still. Certainly looks to be much closer to the camera.

Doesn't look like a flameout as in most of the videos you can hear the engines spooling up right up until impact.

A non graphic aftermath video

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=213_1440261898

Quite a few of the pics seem to show the a/c with some flap deployed.

If I am mistaken, fair enough, but if not is that normal or was this a last minute action to try to generate some additional lift/recover?

Truly awful. RIP.

Quite rightly tomorrows airshow has been cancelled.