Patty - Not wishing to question your extensive knowledge of the causes of crashes but one scenario you haven't considered....maybe he tried to eject but the seat failed leaving him an unwitting passenger in the final stages of the flight. :(

Do these hawks have flight data recorders fitted?

SW

MEDIA PLEASE NOTE

This is cearly a tragic air accident, and the amateur and media speculation realy does not help.

Anyone from the media take on board what MOD, Air Investigators say, we simply do know what happened, and they have not stated the pilot concerned was a hero, he could have equally been neglegent, we simply do know know what happened. This 'Hero' thing has been generated by some of the less credible newspapers, but sadly the BBC are following this 'hero' story.

It is somewhat depressing when after almost every air accident the media claimed the pilot steered his aircraft away from housing. MEDIA PLEASE NOTE, its quite simple, in the event of a forced landing a pilot will look for an open area, that's common sense, the outcome is better in an open area, it's as simple as that, in terms of evacuation by parachute or an ejection seat, again if time permits, there will be consideration, as to where the airframe will end up, but sometimes there is little time to decide, that is generally why we dont fly aerobatics (NOT ACROBATIC, GYMNASTICS, STUNT FLYING OR TRICK FLYING OR OTHER MEDIA UNEDUCATED TERMS THE MEDIA USE) over built up areas, because, in the unlikely event of evacuation we dont want the abandoned airframe to hit dwellings.

Finally, Military pilots, and civilian pilots, train for all sorts of emergencies, but in reality when faced with an emergency, every situation is unique, there can be a combination of factors, it's a dynamic situation in real time when you need to do the best you can faced with an emergency, based on your training and flying experience.

Finally. no accident happens in isolation, any air accident always contains a number of factors, an no one factor can be attributed in isolation, and all pilots know, it's often 'all but the grace of god there go I'! Even the very best pilots can be victims of an error chain.

Clearly this Pilot was well qualified and experienced, but Let's leave it to the miltary accident investigators, out of respect to the Pilot's partner and family, rather than speculting.

I can only add to the previous comment. In my 'incident', 15 Feb 83 (described in the London Gazette 9 May 83), also in a Hawk, the media said I stayed at the controls to avoid an old peoples home. Nothing was further from my mind even if I had been aware of such in the local area.

Yes and one of the media reports even suggested that the pilot was avoiding fishermen walkers on the river bank, of course we all know (pilots not jounalists) that is absurd!

just an observation for the video.

he was in a level turn and then it was almost like he stopped the backpressure on the stick...g loc or elevator failure

just observation from the video

WRT 'zero zero' ejector seats, what about if the aircraft is inverted?

Some reports suggest that the tail was broken off and separated from the fuselage.

Another report (from a reliable source I believe) suggested that no correction appears to have made to the bank from the break:-
From:- http://www.pprune.org/6652362-post51.html

Fuel at the end of a display: 180-250 kgs approx depending upon the diversion being used.
Condolences to family, friends and team mates, terribly terribly sad for all.
Guessing at the causes of an accident is speculation, which is happening in every crewroom in the Air Force and it's what aircrew do....but 'naming' of a victim in a public forum, even by formation position, before the MOD statement (allowing time for kin inform) always has been wrong. Full stop.
Repeating unofficial sources on here about possible victim(s), formation position or callsigns is gossip and not professional.....wrong. Full stop.
I have been closely involved in 3 similar situations and had the unfortunate job of meeting and informing a wife of a similar tragedy. Luckily the Stn Cdr and myself were the first people to meet her as she arrived to pick up her husband and give her the very sad news, ( notwithstanding that someone had tipped off the local radio with a name within minutes of the crash) ...In another fatal, formation display incident people did not to banter names around thank goodness, which was extremely important since the groundcrew servicing and flying in the two aircraft involved had swapped their postions and were not in their traditional seats..It could have resulted in a similar position to the midair cock up referred to earlier, which I remember well. If you have ever been close to families who have lost a member you would understand the need for discipline and discretion in these circumstance. I fully support the suggestion that the moderator adopts a cautious approach in similar future circumstances, as an earlier contributor so rightly said, 'Professional' should be our approach to all air matters.

In order to save some of you the trouble of going into great detail about how incensed or outraged you are about the level of 'reporting' that goes on here after an accident, especially a high profile one such as this, please remember that for all the posts you see on this thread, there are at least 3-4 times as many that are deleted by the moderators, especially as the news is breaking/unfolding.

The problem we as moderators have is that there is an awful lot to trawl through, starting with the 'must be the first to post this breaking news' types followed by the 'must repeat what has already been posted because I can't be arsed to read what is already on there' types.

What then follows is the speculation, often based on little more than the fact that the poster has some vague connection to aviation, possibly an uncle who is a baggage loader at Wythenshaw Municipal. Then come the 'repeaters' who take some ignorant speculation that has already been reported elsewhere and repeat it here, thus starting a hamster wheel of chinese whispers which get repeated by lazy journos who trawl these threads and publish elsewhere which is then read by the 'repeaters' on here who then re-publish... and so on.

In the first hours of an unfolding event, the moderators are trying to to keep some semblance of order and sensibility. It is not easy because as they are reading and taking action on deleting or moving posts, new posts are being made and by the time they have managed to sort out the mess, a new mess has been created while they were sorting out the original one.

Yesterday, I had to close the site for ten minutes to prevent the flood of posts, the vast majority containing nothing new, whilst the original thread on R&N was merged with the one on the Mil forum and then all the RIP posts were extracted and merged into a new but separate thread. Once that was done, the job became a bit easier to manage but it was only thanks to the spread of mods around the globe due to residence or downroute that we managed to, more or less, keep on top of it all.

What is not needed is some of the more sanctimonious posts from those who think they can control the amount of news, rumour and gossip from doing the rounds. PPRuNe is not 'the media' as some would have you believe. PPRuNe is a rumour network which was designed from the start to take advantage of the new information age we find ourselves in. Whilst anyone can post on here, it is primarily for aviatiors, professionals, both military and civilian, in the main. The big words of warning that used to be at the bottom of every page have been removed by the new owners of this site but as a reminder, they used to warn that posts on here could be made by anyone, especially sciolists, so beware.

Even if we were to close the threads as they appear, it would only be a very short matter of time before someone else posted a new one. This is inevitable as it is human nature to want to know and to speculate.

For those who insist on shutting everything down until the board of inquiry has reported back, how come you are the only ones to decide what can and can't be discussed? Do you refrain from talking about the incident with your friends and family? I very much doubt it. And so, it is the same on here.

As moderators, we will try and keep the flow of information as reasonable as we can. We are not full time employees and we are not professional writers. However, we will attempt to keep the flow of information to reasonable debate and speculation. Many of us are ex-military and are fully aware of the sensitivity of information flow during the early stages of new reports, especially those involving casualties, possibly including friends or acquaintances. What we will not do is pull the plug and try and stop what comes naturally... discussion and speculation. For a few individuals to sanctimoniously demand that we shut all discussion down is both futile and insulting.

What we do as Mods is keep the flow going whilst at the same time delete some of the dross that accompanies the input. Yesterday, I read one article on the Sky website that mentioned a name of one of the Reds who took me up in a Hawk a few years ago and I reciprocated by taking him on the flight on the B744. Thankfully, the speculation was wrong and after a short while the name was removed from the reports. Thankfully, it was not repeated on PPRuNe.

So, whilst I and my fellow mods try and keep the various threads in some sort of order and along the track that the title suggests, we do not need the various 'PPRuNe police' turning this thread into a separate debate about the rights and wrongs of reporting what is read elsewhere. This thread is for debate about what happened and what went wrong. There is a separate thread for those who wish to express their condolences to Flt Lt Jon Eggings' family, friends, colleagues and the rest of the Red Arrows team.

Please don't waste your time telling the rest of us how outraged you are at some of the posts you manage to read on here. You should see some of the stuff we mods have had to read and pull. It outnumbers what is on here by about 4:1.

If you still feel the need to have a debate about the rights and wrongs of the news media frenzy that accompanies these sad and unfortunate incidents then start a new thread. To assist you, I have already posted one here: http://www.pprune.org/military-aircr...ml#post6653806

Well said...

Moderators displaying sensible moderation.

Faultless.

Fair enough, well done in very difficult circumstances.

At this risk of keeping this on topic......Shocking i know.

Are they assigned to the same airframes or is it just get what you're given on the day? Also would it be right to assume that if the seat was found empty (as reported by a witness) an ejection must have occurred (demanded or otherwise)?

I assume you are referring to a certain photo taken by a member of the public that appeared on the net yesterday.....?

No - merely an extension of my lateral thinking.

(much of my working life was analysing failures and, in order to do this I frequently had to consider what ifs - even if they were 'unlikely')

Well done Danny2

A sense of reason and explanation. Much appreciated

JohnW

I caught the incident when I switched on BBC news to get the 5 o'clock news yesterday. I saw the video, and my immediate thoughts were that it did not look good.

I have to give the BBC a pat on the back for that report for not having any idle speculation, or revealling anything they probably did know, until the MOD had officially announced that Flt Lt Egging had been killed.

I didn't watch much TV News after that.

Danny, well said, but while this is supposed to be a professional rumour network, it seems like anyone can access it, including people people have no flying experience, I'm not against PPL,s cabin crew, engineers, etc, but is it possible to filter out people without the ability to comment or totaly lacking in any aviation experience?

Would your scheme filter out you then athonite since we know not what you do? just asking.

I'm sorry but this cannot pass without comment:

"Danny, well said, but while this is supposed to be a professional rumour network, it seems like anyone can access it, including people people have no flying experience, I'm not against PPL,s cabin crew, engineers, etc, but is it possible to filter out people without the ability to comment or totaly lacking in any aviation experience?"

What do you suggest - minimum of 1000 hours on type related to the accident and scanned copies of your logbook ?

And who is the 'etc' Come on, give us a definitive list of those you feel worthy enough to contribute. And your reasons why.

Sorry, but these sort of posts pop up on here from time to time and really get my goat.

I say bring in a "three strikes and then the mods pull your stripey handle thing" rule.

A good point RAFRAD.

You have hit the button that is as irksome to us mods as it is to those who, like you, would like them to just go away. We have a lot of work to do chasing the village idiots over the site to rid PPRuNe of them - people who cannot string two words together. As for commenting on an accident such this I am afraid some feel they must. We put up with that until we spot those that are as far removed as its possible to be! As Danny says, we have been deleting daft and stupid posts at a ratio of 4:1 but I would put it higher.

In the next day or two we will probably hear more from the MoD so we have to wait.

In the meantime we wish you and our regulars well.

Nice to see a simple explanation from a moderator. I certainly hadn't realised how 'hands on' they were in monitoring the site.
As someone who's right to comment is probably fairly tenuous I'd be sorry to see access limited.
I do agree that people should think before they post as it's obvious that friends and family can easily be affected by what is said here.

Just to put some perspective on this. Some time ago, my wife was told (or at least inferred) that I had been killed in an accident in Germany. It came from official sources of a sort and not from any kind of social media, although they were few and far between back then. I do not believe that any potential grieving widow is going to be loitering on PPRune. I suspect she is more likely to be trying to contact people who might know the real answer to her concerns, which is what my wife did. The bottom line; this is a rumour network and not an official spokesman for the RAF or any other service. People with a passing aquaintance or even genuine friends will want to know the rumours but, if they are any kind of normal human being, they won't be phoning the next of kin to pass on those rumours. RIP

Both the Beeb and Sky covered this tragedy pretty professionally IMO. The members of the public who were first on the scene no doubt divulged more information than they saw fit to broadcast. Credit where credit is due.

Personally I have no problem with people discussing the causes of accidents such as this - it goes on in real life, why not here? After all I'm sure it is not going to jeopardise the official investigation.

It is one thing to pontificate about possible causes of the accident on a rumour network - the issue here is naming the deceased before the NOK have been told. The mainstream media have a clear understanding with the MOD - they don't name the deceased until NOK and wider family have been informed and where possible don't name the unit (clearly not possible in this case). In any event, please let the professionals break the news to the NOK and the other members of the family in person before outing the identity on the internet, it is a simple matter of humanity.

The professional route takes time because unlike a rumour network, there has to be absolute certainty before telling someone their husband/wife/son/daughter has died and then there needs to be certainty that the right people are being told. Absolute certainty in the immediate aftermath of an incident such as this is in short supply. Finally, someone needs to be called in and put in best bib and tucker to go and break the news. This may be frustrating to those who need instant gratification but again I refer to basic humanity. Please all, in future, think before you blog.

Sort of agreed.

Those of us now flying in the civilian world have had to put up with ill informed or even completely uninformed speculation about the likes of BA38 and continuing speculations of the crew actions of AF447 for a while...it's the way of the modern world ( and yes, IMHO a lot of said speculation sucks).

Having said that as someone who pulled SDO on more than a few occasions I well remember kinformed, etc and I'd agree entirely with restricting the flow of information until NOK are informed....


general all rounder - you posted whilst I typed - nicely put :ok:

Very sad to read of the crash of Red 4.
One of the great things about this forum is that PPLs like myself from the other end of the world who have worked from time to time in the industry can ask questions and post in threads like this military one.
We can get direct access to current and former fast-jet, helicopter and other aviators to indulge a curiosity about our common passion - flight.
I've found out an incredible amount, and enjoyed reading and asking questions of people who have flown legendary aircraft, and who are doing so today... and I've learned a lot about life in the services.
So please don't restrict us from posting and asking questions.
As regards speculation about the causes of crashes, some people here seem to be conflating the principle of not speculating if you are actively involved in the investigation, or operating a similar type, so as to avoid jumping to erroneous and dangerous misconceptions at to root cause - with more generic human curiosity.
People will always speculate - especially pilots, who out of empathy for one of their brethren and concern for the safety of flight, immediately want to try and figure out what went wrong.

Its happening again isn't it ?:*

Tartare:

Eloquently put...

People trying to stop others from speculating on PPRUNE about the causes of accidents are p***ing into the wind.

It happens every time.

I dare say no-one from the Board of Inquiry will be trolling through these pages in their search for answers.

Notable points from the video I saw.

1. Engine apparently working as smoke was still on.
2. No post crash fire.

A way ahead
 

We could always agree to a gentleman's agreement in these dreadful and inevitable situations.

1. Primary. A condolence thread. The family of the lost hero are going to be trawling the interwebs.

2. Secondary. A news thread. "What the news is stating", no analysis - simply linking the news.

3. Tertiary. A conjecture thread. A discussion thread that is sensitive to the situation.

Op MINIMISE should be realized in 1 & 3 above.

Maybe the MODs could create all 3 threads above upon any incident/accident with an opening descriptor founding the rules of such a thread.

MM

Daily Rag this morning quotes a "Senior RAF source" as saying a bird strike was the likely cause.

Many of us who have GA aircraft belong to groups or forums for our particular types. In our group we have maybe forty to fifty regularly active posters and around two hundred or more over all.

Regrettably in the last couple of years we have had a couple of fatalities of our more popular members. From one of them the news came directly from the pilot's partner but both partners posted within a few days suggesting that we should go ahead and discuss the tragedies as it may lead to understanding and improved safety for other pilots.

Emotions are raw immediately after the event but in the longer term different people have different reactions. One of the worst aspects for the bereaved, (just my opinion) is that friends don't know how to approach them and they become isolated if they do not have a separate social circle of their own.

With the above in mind, would someone with influence mind pointing out to the BBC (perhaps again) that this is not the first Red Arrows fatality since the 1970s, as they suggested on BBC Breakfast this morning. Flt Lt Neil MacLachlan was sadly killed in a display practice in January 1988.

Tay Cough: The Daily Telegraph quote reads:

.. and one assumes that this statement is indeed correct.

If you assume that what you read in the paper is accurate, then you are an idiot. Most of what I have read about this incident is wrong, as is the mis-informed analysis of what could have gone wrong. Clachy was killed at Scampton practicing a roll back, I went to the funeral. The Telegraph is wrong.

@Earl / The Daily Telegraph@Mach@Mach@Mach:eek: Who's the idiot?:ugh:

Referring to the wider discussion:

What this site has now to decide is whether it wishes to continue to repel the serious, the highly experienced, the knowledgeable, the well-connected pilots and other aviation expects who have added so much to threads such those on the Vulcan, Concorde etc in the past and want nothing whatever to do with the ignorant tittle-tattle now spamming the site.

If PPRuNe wishes to be just another social media site where anyone can say anything that's fine. But don't expect answers to serious aviation questions from those in a position to give insightful replies. They will have gone.

Until Saturday there were just two places here where serious discussions could be held without adolescent ignorant comments: Military Aircrew and Technical. Now there is only Tech.

Of the best part of two thousand pilots of the Hamble Generation only a handful now bother to contribute here.

Time for a fundamental review of what this site is for.

Otherwise simply rename the whole thing JetBlast - because that is where it's going.

Charming indeed!

My assumption was based on the Telegraph highlighting the fact that there had been no fatalities during public displays (as emphasised by PilotMike).

Your assumption (Mach) was that I believe everything I read and which, perhaps needless to say, is incorrect.