Incident At Fairford RIAT

[ETOPS]

BBC reporting that a Fiat G222 has suffered a nosewheel collapse and fire at RIAT 2002. Runway appears to blocked.....

[MrBernoulli]

TV teletext today mentions an Italian military aircraft bursting into flames on landing at Fairford. Hope its not TOO serious but does anyone have first hand info on this one?

[Baldie Man]

All are OK. No flying display as a result according to BBC reports. Runway blocked due to A/C, airbags & other removal equipment.

Glad nobody was injured and glad I never went today. :D

BM.

[chiglet]

Saw it on Sky/TV Boinnnggg:rolleyes:
Glad no-one was hurt, except pride.
we aim to please, it keeps the cleaners happy

[buvenbee-hind]

Just been on the ITV news. Italian Transaal type thing appeared to land nose wheel first, bounced a few feet, came down again, nose wheel collapsed in shower of sparks and flame from the scraping belly. Pilot kept her straight and she stopped on the runway. Fire crews quickly in, crew quickly out, no injuries.

[jayteeto]

Tactical approach, looks similar to the Dash (?) heavy landing at Farnborough a few years ago.

[BEagle]

That was a Buffalo.

[Pilot Pete]

Amazing pictures on the TV news, incredible nose down attitude in the very steep descent which required a huge round out which he just got slightly wrong landing a three pointer with a bounce and then nose wheel first on the second contact.......ouch!

PP

[MrBernoulli]

Seen the TV news footage now on BBC 1. Ouch! He didn't give the poor nose wheel much of a chance when he got his pitch attitude out of sync with his bounces. Oh dear.

[canberra]

it was a fiat g222, what lockheed are marketing as the c27.

[Propellerhead]

Saw it happen in front of me today. Basically he was demonstrating a kai san (?) approach (steep approach from 1000' used in Sarejevo etc to avoid small arms fire). He bounced heavily, and appeared to land a 2nd time on the nose wheel. Lots of tyre smoke and then the nose gear collapsed. It skidded on its nose for about 800m with a small fire under the fuselage. Came to a stop and the fire was quickly put out. All rather expensive.

The flying program was interrupted and had to be hastily reaaranged, but luckily it happened in the first 2000' of runway so they were able to get some stuff away (firefly, hawks, helicopters, harriers etc.) Took 4 hours to finally reopen full length but the flying programme did resume in full, and in the end not too much was lost! Still a good day out. Feel sorry for the Italian Captain though, not a good day out for him!

[brakedwell]

I expect the Italian Captain is now a Second Lieutenant.

[Plane*jane]

This forum is hardly the right place for RIAT incident.........BAs 777 was swanking around, as well as other commercial aircraft. I personally was quite relieved that there was a delay to the displays (thank god no-one was hrt of course), because I was one of the poor souls who (stupidly) chose the blue route M4 via Siwndon and it took 5 hours to do ? 15 miles. Despite leaving very early it was very frustrating how poorly the anticipated traffic was managed. Being back at Fairford where the access was so much better than Cottesmore, how on earth did it end up so appalling. The worst was listening to Jenny Catt on Vulcan radio 87.7 (commentating the show) who was brightly telling everyone how all the routes in Fairford were all moving. Couldn't get through to the d@*n station either to tell her what rot.
So finally arriving at 1330 when it should have been much much earlier, managed to catch the bulk of the displays, they even reran Eames Glider performance, which is just so beautiful to watch, and luckily the wx played fair game and all managed to to do full displays. An added bonus was the breathtaking B-12 over from Missouri with it's escort of 4 (this time) F15s who had to fly a little lower because of cloudbase. Awesome.
Congrats on the Red Arrows (do these guys have the luck or not, after some really nasty potential CBs and very low black clouds it all blew away to blue skies when they took off) Some excellent manoeuvres, and especially the Jubilee ? burst ?, very very good.

[Scud-U-Like]

Better a live 2nd Lieutenant than a dead Captain

[Daifly]

Been watching him practice his display all week up at Farnborough (one assumes there's now a gap in the display here this week!).

It's a fantastic, and spiritied, display - guess we're all allowed a balls up every now and then.

Glad all got out OK. With the exception of salary, promotion and seniority aspects obviously....!

[dv8]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38147000/jpg/_38147932_crash2300.jpg

[ExSimGuy]

Really Great day there today ;)

[DOC.400]

Great, great day at RIAT. Was watching the 222 do a very spirited display from the queue -not surpirsed he stuffed it!

But -the RAC signs were non-reflective and difficult to read in the dark -apparently motorists were overshooting them in daylight!!Nobody knew where the Early Brid CP was Friday night
Took 2 hours to walk in from the car park, only two X-ray scanners in operation -crazy.

Vulcan FM should be shot, never heard such an amateurish station for ages -it was Jenny Catt's first time on air, and it showed!! Even Sean Moffat's 'commentary' in the morning was very poor -lots of gaps and drivel -he desperately needed a script.

We arrived back at our motor home at 19.15, watched a Beemer take two hours to move 5 car lengths. Eventually left at 23.00 after the CP emptied for a flying run home.

Somebody -organisers, Glos Constabulary need to be shot !!!!

Understand it was BETTER a t Cottesmore because of the direct access to the A1?

Rgds
DOC.400
c.c. RIAT

[Catt]

Didn't understand the x-ray scanner thingys. They asked me to put all my bag on the table next to the scanner, walk through and pick my bag up on the other side :rolleyes:

Any little clockwork+semtex items that may have been sitting in the bottom of my bag would have gone completely undetected :eek:

What is the point in scanning people only? It's the bags you want to check!! To have waited for two hours (well, it felt like it!!) only to find the whole exercise completely futile was rather annoying to say the least. Big round of applause to the people organising the crowd at the beginning and the end though - they had to put up with all manner of abuse. And a special mention to the bomb detection puppy who didn't even flinch as the first fast jet (forget what it was, stripey thingy, lots of noise) went over.

But despite the set backs, an absolutely stunning day as usual.

[Red Snow]

I think the loadie suffered a minor injury (ankle?) when jumping out the back ramp (which, of course, was sticking some way up in the air). Front end crew went out the side windows.

If memory serves right it was a 222 which blew a nose tyre a couple of years ago at the end of his RIAT display in rather similar circs.

[MR WIBBLE]

Hello Boys and Girls and fellow citizens of Wibble,

canberra,

Alenia / Lockheed Martin are marketing the C-27 as the Spartan.

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/123013/L/

Can seem to put a picture in this post so here is a link to the picture anyway.

http://www.airliners.net/open.file/123013/L/

[Flatus Veteranus]

Plane Jane

Agree your remarks about the traffic management, which was simply unacceptable. We managed to get to the car park in time to see the Jordanians who, for me, topped the show. The Reds and the wops were equal second (the wop soloist was superb, as was the Belgian F16 and the Harrier). I was hoping to see Eurofighter, but no show - presumably they were saving themselves for the fat cats at Farnborough rather than the taxpayers at RIAT. We returned to the car after the Reds show at about 1900 and only managed to get off the car park at 2230. Not good enough: back to the drawing board! Somehow, however, the family said they had enjoyed it all when we staggered home at 0030.

The worst incident I saw was not the little one on the runway, but pure road rage when a frustrated ( and probably pi$$ed) motorist got so frustrated that he drove straight at one of the poor bloody marshallers trying to get six lanes of traffic through a single narrow gate out of the car park into the lane. No police in sight! The guy ought to have been arrested and charged with attempted manslaughter. :(

[driver1]

what a great day on sat!!

thanx to all the guys and gals who made us so welcome.

from all the KLM crew :)

[Shouting Rad-Alt]

Plane J!

Stop moaning and learn to read a map, Cheltenham to F'Ford in 40 mins! Just get off the beaten track!

I also watched the ac slide down the R'way, Hmmm. S*$T happens. Fortunately they all walked!

[Background Noise]

Wibble,

I think its the C27J you are referring to. Its a souped up G222 with much the same upgade as the C130J. Saw one being trialled at Deci a couple of years ago, and then watched them towing it behind the line of GAF F4s and driving its wing tip into an F4 fin. Oops.

C27J info: http://www.simviation.com/rinfoc27j.htm

[Nopax,thanx]

Cottesmore was far better, traffic wise - I left home (about 1 hour away) early, expecting to queue for ages, drove straight in and walking around by 9 am.

OK, I thought, but it's bound to be chocker when we leave - again no, it was an absolute breeze. A friend of mine was driving up to Yorkshire on the Saturday, saw the signs and thought "Aaargh! I forgot about the airshow!"

The signs were all he saw - no traffic on the A1 at all.

Now, I know that you can get an awful lot of aircraft into Fairford, but it's not centrally placed to allow everyone in the UK a reasonable drive to get there; it could also be taken away as a public venue, much as Mildenhall has been before. I always used to go to the Air Tattoos, but I don't do Fairford because of the traffic, and the 2001 show at Cottesmore was a belter; do you really need 400 aircraft to make a good airshow?

[EESDL]

Not surprized that the G222s nosewheel collapsed - after all - it's Italian and only designed to go backwards, not forwards:-)

[BLW Skylark 4]

Folks,

As a volunteer on the RIAT photo Team (I was wearing a Hi- Vis vest and spent a lot of time on the aprons and met a few 'PRUNERS' you might have seen me) I've got to set the record straight on a few points raised here.

Firstly, the little G222 incident. I didn't actually see the mishap, but being down on Apron Gold at the time I was on scene shortly after the crash crew had the situation under control. Speaking to the Incident Commander etc. the nosewheel tyre continued burning in the well and this contributed to the majority of the interior damage. Externally it wasn't that bad with just the underside panels dented and scraped etc., but methinks it won't be flying for a while!

Contrary to one of the earlier posts, the runway escaped remarkably well with just a slight scrape and a bit of localised damage where the molten rubber etc. dripped onto the surface. Some sterling work by a RIAT clean up team soon had this sorted and the full runway was soon in use once more.

At this point allow me to state publically how impressive it was to watch both the Fire Services and the 'Crash & Smash' boys from St. Athan in action - the main contributing factor to the 4 hr delay in getting the aircraft moved was actually waiting for a suitable crane to be brought in from off site. Some food for thought for the future maybe?

Overall though a big well done to all concerned - it was a privellage to work with you.

Turning now to the other points raised namely the traffic etc. photographing this was actually one of our taskings so I did have more interest than perhaps is healthy in this. It was always known that security was going to be a big problem and anything which interrupts the flow of people through the gates will unfortunately inevitably cause delays. There was a problem with one of the gate locks on the Saturday morning which was only solved by the intervention of an angle grinder so if you were stucking in that long pedestrian crew on the Kempsford Road (past RIAT staff reception), that was why. Unfortunately though this introduced a back log and in turn swamped the security staff who were trying to do their job.

My understanding is that the increased security measures were a requirement of the USAF and hence there is not a lot that can be done. Unfortunately getting that number of people in and out of anywhere at the same time can never go without delay. Also, despite what was said earlier - random bag searches and other measures which I wont go into on this forum were in use so I assure you that the delays weren't for nothing.

All I can say is that every volunteer I met worked very hard to make the day as safe and enoyable as they could for the public & participants and therefore idiots like the one described in one of the previous postings taking it out on the poor marshaller deserve to be locked up!

Finally, thanks to all who took part or contributed to the show for a very tiring but hugely enjoyable week.

"BLW"