Canadian Forces Snowbirds CT-114 down in British Columbia
Medod
I would bet with near certainty they would not have been wearing immersion suits. I did 3.5 years at Cold Lake and was never even issued one. I did make use of cold weather gear though!
I have been to Kamloops in May and I have a picture of me in shorts and t-shirt at a restaurant and clearly remember it being in the mid to high 20’s (Celsius). The Kamloops area has a much warmer climate than many parts of Canada. Indeed, Kelowna just down the road is a wine growing region. The river might be pretty chilly (unlikely to have fresh glacial melt water) but certainly no worse than the temperature of the UK seas that we regularly fly over without immersion suits.
Far from avoiding the river, in the event of an engine failure I would have been aiming for it as my intended ejection site and would have briefed accordingly. Unless I had sufficient speed for a reciprocal EFATO pattern.
Remember, as I keep saying, all of this chat presupposes there was an engine failure in the first place. I have yet to see any evidence that this was the case.
BV
I have been to Kamloops in May and I have a picture of me in shorts and t-shirt at a restaurant and clearly remember it being in the mid to high 20’s (Celsius). The Kamloops area has a much warmer climate than many parts of Canada. Indeed, Kelowna just down the road is a wine growing region. The river might be pretty chilly (unlikely to have fresh glacial melt water) but certainly no worse than the temperature of the UK seas that we regularly fly over without immersion suits.
Far from avoiding the river, in the event of an engine failure I would have been aiming for it as my intended ejection site and would have briefed accordingly. Unless I had sufficient speed for a reciprocal EFATO pattern.
Remember, as I keep saying, all of this chat presupposes there was an engine failure in the first place. I have yet to see any evidence that this was the case.
BV
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pontiflex,
I think that your suggestion of what may have happened is totally unfounded and equally unacceptable. Trying to allocate blame with absolutely NO proof is ridiculous.
From my experience, people who are relatively inexperienced but who have been briefed properly, will do exactly as told. If EJECT, EJECT, EJECT is commanded I would not expect the seat to still be there by the 3rd EJECT.
Equally, I would not expect an inexperienced person to recognise when a dangerous situation, as in this accident, was developing. I would not necessarily expect an inexperienced person to initiate ejection with no command from the pilot.
I totally agree with BV that ditching would be out of the question when in a bang seat. SAFE HEIGHT, SAFE SPEED, WINGS LEVEL - EJECT
I think that your suggestion of what may have happened is totally unfounded and equally unacceptable. Trying to allocate blame with absolutely NO proof is ridiculous.
From my experience, people who are relatively inexperienced but who have been briefed properly, will do exactly as told. If EJECT, EJECT, EJECT is commanded I would not expect the seat to still be there by the 3rd EJECT.
Equally, I would not expect an inexperienced person to recognise when a dangerous situation, as in this accident, was developing. I would not necessarily expect an inexperienced person to initiate ejection with no command from the pilot.
I totally agree with BV that ditching would be out of the question when in a bang seat. SAFE HEIGHT, SAFE SPEED, WINGS LEVEL - EJECT
Passengers do “recognise” a dangerous situation - in their opinion - and eject, Ask the Red Arrows when a passenger ejected in Scotland.
The reason behind the decision to pull out of formation is, at present, a mystery, but this tragedy resulted from a late ejection outside seat limits. Why? We don’t know, why the pilot turned left we don’t know, why the turn resulted in a stall spin, we don’t know, except the aerodynamics and inertial forces can lead to a spin following a stall in a turn. There are far more questions than answers and they will only come from the BOI.
As for survival, neither occupant had a full chute, but the pilot hit a roof and the passenger hit a tree. The roof was probably slightly more forgiving.
RIP Captain, and I hope for a full recovery for the Pilot.
Is it possible that Capt Casey hesitated to pull the handle when ordered to do so and the Captain delayed his own ejection whilst trying to persuade her to do so. In no way is this meant to criticize the young lady but I can visualizse the situation in the cockpit as I have been in his situation. Fortunately we were at a good height.
Last edited by dead_pan; 22nd May 2020 at 16:04.
Ejection sequence:
- pull the handles/slam your head back into the headrest as the belt tensioner will pull you back into the seat (you do not want your head down when the rocket fires due to neck injury).
- canopy release fires; hopefully canopy separates (otherwise you are going though the canopy with the ram leading the way)
- rocket seat initiates up the rails
- seat drogue fires to provide drag to the seat to help with man/seat separation.
- seat/man separator fires . This releases the 5-point harness and a "kicker" pushes the body/seat pack (which contains the survival equipment) out of the seat.
- as you exit the seat a lanyard is attached to the harness which initiates chute deployment
I did initially suspect the first seat was trailing the chute just before it disappeared from view, but on reflection I think this is the remnants of rocket efflux.
If you saY WHAT or repeat after that command you will be talking to yourself and I was NOT kidding.
I use something called Adobe Premiere Pro as a video editor. It's timeline is measured in thousands of a second. I will see if I can capture the exact time of the knife edge at the top and the frame I used to determine the eject height. The poster above, the ex BA and military guy, is right on it being an average speed and that may be useful to at least give an idea that it was greater than that.
I don't know if there is consensus about what was going on aerodynamically to start the descent. I seems to most that it was a stall in the bank and a spin. Stopped after one rotation to wings level and the nose pitched up. Pitched up by how much? And by what force, pilot, or the natural rising of the nose in the incipient portion of a spin before it goes flat. If a Tutor flat spins when fully developed. I'd venture to say Capt. MacDougall did get the spin stopped, but the aircraft was not vertical at that point and seemed to be under some sort of control. You can see that after the eject, the aircraft pitched down and was not spinning. In the period before the eject, and immediately after, the aircraft is very nose down and there is the appearance and likely the reality of a high rate of descent. The ROD may have been less at the moment of eject.
I'm normally on the side that says speculation on the cause of crashes is good because most of us are civilian pilots and any unanswered questions after a crash are often questions we would have on our mind the next day when we go flying in a similar type or situation. That doesn't hold with military accidents. So, I tend to want to hear the ex military guys give their inputs. I've put in this wee analysis of heights to add that small bit. Captain Mac Dougall has thankfully survived, and whatever we might think, he surely knows what happened and in time we will all know.
I'll see if I can come up with that average ROD.
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Hi Dave and those chatting about seat ejection. I'm a journalist looking to speak with pilots about ejection systems, the old versus the new. Could you shoot me an email? I'm at [email protected]
Ex JP QFI ,here , dare I chip in again ?
For once I am with the benefit of hindsight in violent agreement with BV when he says..
"Far from avoiding the river, in the event of an engine failure I would have been aiming for it as my intended ejection site and would have briefed accordingly. Unless I had sufficient speed for a reciprocal EFATO pattern."
Makes complete sense to me but I think the issue here is the single engined "light jet" my be spring loaded towards a turn back towards the field in the event of an engine failure...
For once I am with the benefit of hindsight in violent agreement with BV when he says..
"Far from avoiding the river, in the event of an engine failure I would have been aiming for it as my intended ejection site and would have briefed accordingly. Unless I had sufficient speed for a reciprocal EFATO pattern."
Makes complete sense to me but I think the issue here is the single engined "light jet" my be spring loaded towards a turn back towards the field in the event of an engine failure...
Ex JP QFI ,here , dare I chip in again ?
For once I am with the benefit of hindsight in violent agreement with BV when he says..
"Far from avoiding the river, in the event of an engine failure I would have been aiming for it as my intended ejection site and would have briefed accordingly. Unless I had sufficient speed for a reciprocal EFATO pattern."
Makes complete sense to me but I think the issue here is the single engined "light jet" my be spring loaded towards a turn back towards the field in the event of an engine failure...
For once I am with the benefit of hindsight in violent agreement with BV when he says..
"Far from avoiding the river, in the event of an engine failure I would have been aiming for it as my intended ejection site and would have briefed accordingly. Unless I had sufficient speed for a reciprocal EFATO pattern."
Makes complete sense to me but I think the issue here is the single engined "light jet" my be spring loaded towards a turn back towards the field in the event of an engine failure...
I would bet with near certainty they would not have been wearing immersion suits. I did 3.5 years at Cold Lake and was never even issued one. I did make use of cold weather gear though!
I have been to Kamloops in May and I have a picture of me in shorts and t-shirt at a restaurant and clearly remember it being in the mid to high 20’s (Celsius). The Kamloops area has a much warmer climate than many parts of Canada. Indeed, Kelowna just down the road is a wine growing region. The river might be pretty chilly (unlikely to have fresh glacial melt water) but certainly no worse than the temperature of the UK seas that we regularly fly over without immersion suits.
Far from avoiding the river, in the event of an engine failure I would have been aiming for it as my intended ejection site and would have briefed accordingly. Unless I had sufficient speed for a reciprocal EFATO pattern.
Remember, as I keep saying, all of this chat presupposes there was an engine failure in the first place. I have yet to see any evidence that this was the case.
BV
I have been to Kamloops in May and I have a picture of me in shorts and t-shirt at a restaurant and clearly remember it being in the mid to high 20’s (Celsius). The Kamloops area has a much warmer climate than many parts of Canada. Indeed, Kelowna just down the road is a wine growing region. The river might be pretty chilly (unlikely to have fresh glacial melt water) but certainly no worse than the temperature of the UK seas that we regularly fly over without immersion suits.
Far from avoiding the river, in the event of an engine failure I would have been aiming for it as my intended ejection site and would have briefed accordingly. Unless I had sufficient speed for a reciprocal EFATO pattern.
Remember, as I keep saying, all of this chat presupposes there was an engine failure in the first place. I have yet to see any evidence that this was the case.
BV
Someone mentioned that they were up to 200 knots in the low level pass by the camera. You can see takeoff flap is still down as they pass. Can you have flap out at 200 knots?
cncpc
The 200 knots thing came from me a little while back. I said the aircraft were probably sub 200 knots at the departure end of the runway. I have no idea of the flap limiting speeds.
I was implying that there was almost certainly not enough energy to complete a 180 turn let alone get lined up with the runway if there had been a total loss of thrust.
Please bear in mind I have not flown the Tutor so my views cannot be taken as authoritative.
BV
I was implying that there was almost certainly not enough energy to complete a 180 turn let alone get lined up with the runway if there had been a total loss of thrust.
Please bear in mind I have not flown the Tutor so my views cannot be taken as authoritative.
BV
Most of my military flying was done in M.B. seats. I've never ejected but plenty of my squadron mates have. In one case a gent who's J-57 was shooting craps in the landing pattern, tried both the primary and secondary ejection handles (face curtain and between the knees handle) but was unable to initiate the ejection sequence; the handles simply wouldn't move. So, after running out of ideas, he went back to flying the aircraft and the old P&W engine kept on chugging long enough to get him on the ground without further drama. Turns out the Martin Baker seat wasn't properly maintained and the forces required to pull the handle(s) were way out of spec. Other aviators have reported difficulty with the Martin Baker ejection handles and a common complaint is that the force required was higher than expected.
After looking at the video it appears that the Snowbird pilot made the decision to zoom and eject for whatever reason. It would seem natural to want to maximize the altitude based on the rather limited capability of the Weber seat. A the top of his climb he stopped flying the Tutor and started the ejection sequence. I'm wondering if, for some reason he (like my squadron mate) could have had some difficulty with the ejection. A delay of only a few seconds concentrating on the ejection with nobody flying the airplane could easily result in a stall/spin situation especially after using up every bit of the available kinetic energy in the zoom climb.
By the time he managed to eject, even though the delay was short, it was too late. This is pure speculation of course, but it makes a lot more sense to me than stories about avoiding populated areas, doing low speed barrel rolls to "show off" and some of the other guesses about the timing of the ejection.
I'm not familiar with the Weber seat, so perhaps some Tutor pilot might chime in with any sea-stories about how difficult it might be to pull the handle(s) and/or if anyone has reported unusual effort required to fire the seat or other factors which might cause a two or three second delay in ejecting after the decision to take the nylon let-down has been made.
After looking at the video it appears that the Snowbird pilot made the decision to zoom and eject for whatever reason. It would seem natural to want to maximize the altitude based on the rather limited capability of the Weber seat. A the top of his climb he stopped flying the Tutor and started the ejection sequence. I'm wondering if, for some reason he (like my squadron mate) could have had some difficulty with the ejection. A delay of only a few seconds concentrating on the ejection with nobody flying the airplane could easily result in a stall/spin situation especially after using up every bit of the available kinetic energy in the zoom climb.
By the time he managed to eject, even though the delay was short, it was too late. This is pure speculation of course, but it makes a lot more sense to me than stories about avoiding populated areas, doing low speed barrel rolls to "show off" and some of the other guesses about the timing of the ejection.
I'm not familiar with the Weber seat, so perhaps some Tutor pilot might chime in with any sea-stories about how difficult it might be to pull the handle(s) and/or if anyone has reported unusual effort required to fire the seat or other factors which might cause a two or three second delay in ejecting after the decision to take the nylon let-down has been made.
Totally agree. Whilst this has naturally captured our interest. we know nothing other than they ejected, and one, incredibly sadly, died. RIP Ms Casey
I keep asking myself whether it is strange that there do seem to be any significant sounds or signs of smoke, flame or debris from the tailpipe. The engine would appear to have gone from take off thrust to very little / none in no more than 10 seconds, and I would have expected there to be some evidence of this, beyond the all too obvious.
Falcon
That is precisely why I keep banging that particular drum. I don’t believe anybody has overstepped the mark so far by discussing actions in the event of an engine failure at such a stage of flight from runway 09 at Kamloops but we still don’t know if that is what happened here.
Although the video may appear to show a scenario that seems obvious, there is still no evidence to back that up.
I suspect even the initial flight safety report may not clear that up either. It might be a long wait to know precisely why the zooming turn was initiated.
As for an ADR I can’t help you there. I don’t know the Tutor airframe but my gut feeling is that one won’t be fitted. Being a Snowbirds jet it may have a camera fit but that is pure speculation.
BV
Although the video may appear to show a scenario that seems obvious, there is still no evidence to back that up.
I suspect even the initial flight safety report may not clear that up either. It might be a long wait to know precisely why the zooming turn was initiated.
As for an ADR I can’t help you there. I don’t know the Tutor airframe but my gut feeling is that one won’t be fitted. Being a Snowbirds jet it may have a camera fit but that is pure speculation.
BV
No CVR or FDR in the Tutor