I call it a maneuver with a vertical pitching component and roll to the left. I have no idea what the pilot meant it to be and will not speculate. As for the aircraft entering "on the A axis and exiting on the B axis", I see no evidence of an exit on a B axis. And wishing to avoid another pointless long back and forth, I will terminate this exchange here.

Ken you are a crazy guy. There is a graphic in the AAIB report that shows the axis change - as of course it will if you add some aileron. I call it A and B axis for brevity but the start axis is almost 90deg off the point of accident.

You know I don't mind or care if you want to engage or not but it's a bit rich calling things wild speculation when a lot of items are very plain.

Pitts you might want to check you axes... The manoeuvre was started at a slight tangent to the B axis (heading towards the crowdline.)

The AAIB’s Special Bulletin appears not to say a great deal, but when one reads between the lines I think it also tells us a great deal.

• The pilot had only 40 hours on type. Perhaps others could comment on how many hours a military pilot would be likely to have on type before being allowed too conduct a display like this in front of and next to the public.
• The pilot (an airline pilot) flew to North Weald in a light aircraft – I believe the RAF has major concerns over cognitive errors associated with pilots flying such different types of aircraft.
• The report refers to the time on type in the last 28 and 90 days and that displays had been flown in other types. It also confirms that the pilot had the met the requirement to have flown the display sequence at least 3 times and once in the last 90 days.
• The AAIB don’t seem to have been able to compare the actual flight path on the day against either a planned/documented or authorised display.
• The report makes the point (twice) that the aircraft was fuelled with a full fuel load. I don’t know whether it makes a difference for this type of manoeuvre in the Hunter. Perhaps an experienced Hunter pilot can comment. The report also comments on the extended take off roll.
• The report has commented on the seeming absence of abnormal indications and that the aircraft seemed to be responding correctly to control inputs.
• Others have comments on the apparently low max height achieved and low minimum airspeed at the top of the manoeuvre.

As I have said before, I suspect that the AAIB will find many similarities between this accident and the recent Gnat accident at CarFest – aspects such as pilot selection, experience (including type), training, supervision, management, currency, etc, etc. This interim report just confirms my fears. We haven't even really started to discuss the 'system' (or lack of) which allowed this display to take place where it did.

I think we all know which way this is going, but dare not say so for fear of offending the vocal minority - pilots defending pilots. Not unlike the closed shop that the GMC is often criticised about.

The scale of this tragedy was very easily avoidable.

S-D

Several of you have been referring to today's AAIB publication as an Interim Report. I think it's worth pointing out that it is a Special Bulletin; hence its brevity at 7 pages. If the AAIB later publishes an Interim Report (ahead of the Final Report) it will be considerably longer and much more detailed.

Quote from salad-dodger:
"I think we all know which way this is going, but dare not say so for fear of offending the vocal minority - pilots defending pilots. Not unlike the closed shop that the GMC is often criticised about."

"I think" that is an unnecessary and inappropriate slur to aircrew generally, and particularly inappropriate at this stage of an investigation into a tragedy involving so many fatalities. This is a forum primarily for aircrew, which I assume you are not. Making comparisons with the medical profession is irrelevant because its members rarely suffer death or injury during and/or as a result of their practice. To refer to pilots as a "closed shop" is ridiculous. In fact, pilots' strongest critics tend, in my experience, to be other pilots.

Good point Chris. I have amended my last post.

S-D

Whilst I agree with CS regards second guessing the outcome of the AAIB i feel he should be reminded that this forum is for:-

"A forum for the professionals who fly military hardware. ALSO for the backroom boys and girls who support the flying and maintain the equipment, and without whom nothing would ever leave the ground. All armies, navies and air forces of the world equally welcome here".

salad-dodger wrote: This is a load of hoop which first emerged after the fatal accident to ZE982. In that event, the pilot hadn't flown low level overland for 2 months and was manoeuvring a heavy F3 at low level. He had only averaged 12 hours per month on the F3 since first flying it, including his OCU course. But he also flew light aircraft.

The article in Air Clues states Pilots like to fly! If the RAF cannot afford to give them more than a handful of hours per month, such that they're at their recency on type limit, it's hardly surprising that some pilots will look for other opportunities. But blaming light aircraft flying as inciting cognitive failures, particularly without any proof, is wholly unreasonable.

The Hunter pilot met all experience and recency requirements. End of!

salad-dodger

IMHO (knowing AH's background) in the specific areas of suitability for selection and general experience I suspect the AAIB won't find any similarity at all between the two accidents.

That said I'm also well aware those with experience are capable of making mistakes and/or being the victim of a malfunction.

BEagle

I agree. There have been quite a few F3 mates flying Hurricanes, Spitfires, Dakota, Lancaster and Chippies when at Coningsby without an issue. The difference being that when at Coningsby the average mate was getting 18-20hrs per month, but at Leuchars in the F3's twilight years that had dropped down to a measily 12 or so. I agree that flying light aircraft or any other type of aircraft should have little bearing on flying a fast jet if they have had lots of recency/continuity.

On another note, the AAIB report mentions taking an 8 kt tailwind for take off - filled to the gunnels with fuel this will certainly extend your take off roll! Anyone know if the runway taken (RWY02) was a short cut to reduce engine running time (£££s)? Seems to me an odd thing to do if you don't have to?

LJ

PS. Having read the AAIB piece I still stand by my post #540 as to my deduction on what happened "to me I think it was a factor of a modified 1/4 clover and then an oblique pull through that meant that the normal gate height would probably have been too low. Normally a 1/4 clover would be from 90 degs from the crowdline but the position of Lancing and Lancing College make this difficult."

Chris S, you are right, I am not aircrew. My profile is clear that I am an engineer. I have worked in military and civil aviation all my life and latterly (>15 years) in airworthiness and safety. I think that means that I qualify for this forum. There are aspects of this thread that do come across as people closing ranks. this was particularly so in the early pages.

The AAIB Special Bulletin alludes to issues that are common in many accidents. I have little doubt that several issues I suggested will feature and that we will see changes to relations. As BEagle points out, the pilot met the currency requirements. The next question should be whether those requirements are sufficient for this type of activity? On the face of it, 40hrs on type over 4 years seems very little.

Wiggy, you will also note that I referred to supervision, management, currency, etc.

S-D

Lightning Loops
 

Let me preface my comments to the above quote (Post #596) by saying that, in my view, this is irrelevant to the Hunter display at Shoreham.
This may well be how bigglesbrother displayed the Lightning, and it certainly makes for the tightest manoeuvre. I have seen a number of Lightning displays flown in this manner and told one of the pilots that I hoped his faith in Rolls Royce was not misplaced. The downside is that any loss of thrust in the last quarter of the loop has the unavoidable consequence of busting base height. My preference was to use max chat for the first quarter, ease the pull to increase speed and height over the top, reduce power during the third quarter and fly down to base height increasing to full burner on completion. This technique also worked well on the Phantom.

S-D

Beagle has beaten me to it but I would also like to point out that AH's airline flying has been Airbus for many years and there is absolutely no way whatsoever that you could confuse operating an Airbus with polling a Hunter around so I would suggest cognitive errors are a red herring.

Just to add to that, in my experience cognitive errors are more common on similar types rather than dissimilar.

At one point the RN was a little twitched that I was flying Rotary and Fixed wing simultaneously, but it never caused me any problems.

At an earlier point I flew different versions of the same aircraft. One single pilot and one twin.
That, I found tricky on occasion.

S-D

I didn't miss that, I simply chose to comment specifically about selection and AH's experience (over his career).. I haven't a clue about the rest..

The only problem I've ever had between poling different types was flying a flexwing microlight - pushing forwward for the flare just doesn't feel quite right!!! :eek:

LJ

Hello salad-dodger,

Thanks for your response. The only part of your post that I objected to was the penultimate paragraph I quoted. The rest of it raises/summarises some valid discussion points.

No occupation comes under greater, constant scrutiny - not to mention media attention when things go wrong - than professional flight crew. In the midnight hours, I inferred that you were either a phishing journalist or someone with a grudge against aircrew. it is evident now that my assumption was wrong, but I still reject your allegation against the pilot profession, which you patronisingly described as a "vocal minority" [of] "pilots defending pilots", likening them to a "closed shop".

Quote from Mickj3:
Whilst I agree with CS regards second guessing the outcome of the AAIB i feel he should be reminded that this forum is for:-

"A forum for the professionals who fly military hardware. ALSO for the backroom boys and girls who support the flying and maintain the equipment, and without whom nothing would ever leave the ground. All armies, navies and air forces of the world equally welcome here".

Yes, and I'm not even ex-military! The forum I was referring to was PPRuNe as a whole, which I believe is primarily an aircrew forum. That is not to suggest that we do not need to be informed and challenged by ground crew and everyone else involved in the science, technology and business of making aircraft fly. I was at Dunsfold last weekend, and the most enjoyable and informative conversation I had was with a line-maintenance engineer (on a non-Hunter topic).

I must say that throughout my considerable military aviation career it has been my experience that aircrew are more openly critical of each other than in any other group of people I have experienced. Quite rightly so and understandable when one considers how often we depended upon each other for our longevity.

From a lay perspective, that seems appallingly little practice for someone who's supposed to be a professional doing complicated, risky work in a modern and well-funded military. I spend more time than that eating lunch.

P

Re the 12 hours and:

FWIW I seem to have hazy memories of something like 15 hours a month being the NATO requirement/norm way back when I was squadron stats officer on a fast jet squadron 30 plus years ago...

I'll refrain from further comment:E

Phil, that is why they have simulators.

Multi types
 

Salad Dodger
has opinions about the RAF's attitude to multi types, not so
We were encouraged to fly the chipmunk from squadrons for the ATC and at RAE Bedford we could easily fly several types in one day. I understand that as the Buc had no two seaters for squadrons the hunter was usually used for check flights
I found in practice there was no problem if the types were very dissimilar but if you flew two that had similar configurations, say the Varsity or Devon and the Dack, it was easy to get the speed limits mixed up so special care was needed but with that extra care, and a supervisors warning there was no problem

I think this suggests that this panel took a differing view:-

https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...y_part_1_4.pdf

page 19 relates:-

I think it was the use of rudder that was of focus.

Pittsextra,

"... may have contributed to the accident". It was the panels opinion and if you read this report carefully I am sure you will agree that the postulations regarding use of rudder are not a typical control strategy in any aircraft. Therefore, did the panel really have the experience and knowledge to be qualified to comment on multi-typing or light aircraft flying?

To all of you who persistently pontificate about multi-typing:

I have flown multiple types of aircraft under military regulation plus civilian types for many years and still do. Even as a first tourist 35 years ago I was current on 3 types. 9 mil reg types at one time was probably the most during a couple of tours (plus about half a dozen civilian types). There is a lot of total BS written about multi-typing by those who have never done it or don't understand how to do it safely. There is a specific discipline in being able to multi-type safely and it needs to be discussed, taught, mentored and supervised. But it CAN be done safely if performed correctly although there are limits which need to be respected.

On the subject of multi-typing there appears to be a lot of 'why remain silent and be thought of as a fool when you can open your mouth and remove all reasonable doubt'. Rant over.

Lomcevak - here is another saying...don't shoot the messenger!

I don't think AH's other flying is a factor. If currency was something to look at then I'd start with simply looking at the time on type doing aeros, and from a relevant height.

I merely linked the F3 report as someone asked the question.

Meanwhile this film shows the pilot and aircraft perform the initial (and relevant) part of the display in July 2015. It shows (I think?) the 1/4 clover with the rolling element downwards, is it different to the Shoreham display, where I see the rolling upwards? its not that easy to tell in the Bray film but it doesn't look as if its rolled anywhere near as much until the back side of the loop?

It certainly isn't a very easy figure to judge accurately as it doesn't seem to be clear what the figure really is. Although regardless of the heading change it should be clear if you are rolling up or down and I still don't see how that is a standard figure under CAP403. Just a view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P2TV2HZUss

I've since scanned through the appropriate page in my book 'The Royal Air Force At Home' (kindly pardon the plug) and I noted that in 1953, all aerobatics manoeuvres had to be complete above 1,500' by solo and formation teams. By 1963 this had been lowered to 1,000'. This was in Fighter Command Air Staff instructions. However, this, among other rules, could be relaxed for special occasions such as Farnborough etc.

Rose tinted memories always suggest otherwise and I am aware that display sequences were put together by the pilot crew with some degree of latitude but the C.O/Squadron Commanders' ruling or adjudication on anything at all was certainly not up for debate.

Nevertheless, it suggests a fair accommodation that 500' is the rule now. I've seen some photos of RAF flying displays, especially the Red Arrows from the '60s and '70s and frankly there is no way that the stipulated rules appear to be wholly satisfied.:E

FB:)

Do you have any idea about the use of rudder in the F3? Do you also understand that the use of rudder did not contribute to the accident you have conveniently cited, presumably to make a minor point. A good friend of mine died in that accident and, for some inexplicable reason, I take exception to people using it just to prove a cheap point.

You a military pilot? If not, please show a little respect here before using military casualties to support your arguments in what is merely an online speculation competition.

Sorry for the thread drift, but there have been a few red herrings discussed recently here.

In the case of the F3 accident, the pilots experience on type and level of experience on light aircraft undoubtedly DID have an effect on that accident. The fact of the matter is when you reduce the flying rate to minimum, the most affected are the pilots with the least experience. With so few F3 hours, and very few indeed at low level and in that stores fit, plus a far greater number of recent hours, flying in the same valleys, in light aircraft, it is simply impossible that the mismatch between the pilots expectation of turn performance and the reality of the aircraft abilities at the time did not factor in the accident.

This is a totally different case to AH on the Hunter in my belief, as he will have spent thousands of hours at the start of his career on fast jet types so has a huge bank of experience to draw on, albeit not in the Hunter. However, his much more frequent Airbus hours in recent years are pretty unlikely to have denigrated this earlier experience in the way it would for someone who had less experience to draw on. This is also why I think the issues here are quite different to the recent Gnat crash, where whatever your thought on KW, he definitely had far less total FJ experience to draw on in times of need.

None of this is meant in disrespect to the deceased or critically injured, I'm merely trying to prevent false parallels being drawn between these 3 quite unrelated accidents.

FJ2ME

I'll add that as mentioned briefly in the AAIB report in addition to his Airbus and light aircraft (propeller) flying AH continued to fly various marks of the JP - not fast jets I'd agree but not 90 knot bug smashers either.

I think it should be noted that AH's light aircraft experience was mostly in relatively high performance machines and much of it as part of a formation duo display team (as opposed to 'merely' flying around in 90 kt puddle jumpers).

From someone with lots of F3 time and puddle-jumper time - I wholeheartedly disagree with this comment:

The biggest factor was that he was flying a heavyweight F3 (it was L fit) and he cut it too fine. Flying a L fit F3 and a puddle-jumper are so vastly diffrent that I cannot imagine how the two could ever blur - it's like a motorcycle versus a Transit van or windsurfer vs a yacht! Quite simply, I believe he did not have enough recency and implied skill to fly a heavyweight Lima-fit jet at low level - whether he flew puddle-jumpers or not.

In my mind there are similarities in the current Hunter accident, as well. A jet reportedly filled to full with underwing tanks, alleged low numbers of hours of recency and what appears to be cutting it too fine. I guess we will see when the AAIB release their final report.

Sadly, my disagreement about light aircraft and F3 will never bring back N & K from that tragic day. However, their passing provided a valuable lesson in minimum hours to stay recent on type - that day, with regret, we found out what that was.

LJ

Full fuel load has been reported. What was the likely display load after the transit and loiter?

I would guess the AAIB would also investigate previous display fuel loads.

Just for comparison;

At a similar point in a display season on a fast jet, my recent experience on type was;
Previous 30 days: 25 hours (including 7 practices +3 displays),
Previous 90 days: 85 hours (including 16 practices + 8 displays),
Total : 400 hours in 17 months + 2000 hours on similar performance jet.

Lucky me!

Mulit-type-ing is only a scary and mysterious risk for those who haven't done it and, therefore, don't understand it. The analogous situation would be to say that Formula 1 drivers should not be allowed to drive 'normal' performing cars on the open roads, or vice-versa, because of the unquantifiable risk of spacial disorientation.

Ref the 2600ft - 100kts, anyone have any info on what the gate should have been (to e.g. level out at 500ft?) if the move was intended to be a 1/4 clover.

I assume that if 2600ft/100kts was the actual height/speed, the fate of the AC was already set at the apex?

I'm not trying to invite speculation as to why the gate may have been missed.

PS I took SD to mean a minority of pilots who are over defensive, rather than all pilots. There certainly are some of those, and they are a minority, thankfully, but often quite noisy. The most professional/'best' pilots are almost never in that category in my experience.

Sherif, the CAA minimum for currency for flying an intermediate PtF Jet seems a little low compared to your requirement to stay current. I think there might be a change or two to the CAP post the review on the matter.

I see the bar is still open :)

That bulletin is interesting for between the line reading. It is a taken that the AAIB are competent, but even that must be tested.

Now we still do not not know why events occurred but these AAIB comments nudge my eyebrow, partly in understanding and partly in some worry-some thought.

The 100'/500' minima are normal in DAs and as this was a vertical manouver, the pilot would expect to reach gate height for a vertical recovery by 500' .

I am not sure I wholly agree with the AAIB stating

My eyeball on the day [from a ringside 400m] and review of video footage with an Ordnance Survey map would have suggested he approached broadly on the A Axis and rolled off it. The crash is 45 degree of axis so he cannot have started at 45 degrees - seemples! But that is nit picking.

OTOH it but causes me to temper my interpretation of AAIB facts with a healthy pinch of salt a this time. Even AAIB can be guilty of some mild speculation.

A manoeuvre of change of axis [from some degree off A axis to a greater number of degrees off it is complicated by the 1000' restriction over the residential area to the West of the airfield.

It creates both a temptation and a requirement to 'keep it tight'.

That being 10 hours per year. That, to my mind, may not affect the competency of an individual to both fly and low level aerobat the a/c, but it may affect future DA issues when viewed in the context a planned aerobatic display for the public.

In other words they have yet undertaken an analysis of flight path and speed. Interesting ... or they have but the outcome needs double and triple checking before they go hard.


and

Now AAIB would not state this if they were not sure as sure can be - so we may assume these are facts which would pass for government work.

So your homework for this week Bloggs:

Let's talk about that old aerodynamic monkey, the stall.

In particular an stall while inverted at a nudge under 3000'. With 10 seconds to sort it out.

Here's the pen, there's the marker board, you draw it. I'm off for a coffee.

Excellent post, Reheat. :ok:

Tragically Ironic?
 

From the AAIB report.

"It commenced a gentle climbing right turn to 1,600 ft amsl, executing a Derry turn to the left and then commenced a descending left turn to 200 ft amsl,..."

Airspeed has little to do with it - it's the acceleration that matters, but you knew that anyway, or was it a trick question? If the aircraft was close to zero G at the top, the stall speed would also have been close to zero. At the top, assuming the engine was still developing thrust, the aircraft would have started to accelerate in both senses of the word - thrust + vertical component of W increasing the airspeed, and the G acceleration of pulling around the curve.

From what I observed in the video the aircraft did not looked "distressed" due to low speed at the top, and I would strongly disagree with the notion that may only have been 10 seconds to sort something out at this point even if he had been concerned about his airspeed, or gate height. In any event, had there been a problem at the top, say as a result of loss of thrust, or whatever, I am sure the pilot would have pulled to an inverted 30 or 45 downline and then simply rolled erect, rather than consider an entire pull through.

There did however appear to be (to me at least) a rather more "gentle" pull from the vertical than I might have expected - until it became obvious that the ground was looming rapidly. Shortly prior to impact it appeared to me to be fully stalled in an accelerated state...and perhaps also the apparent wing rock immediately prior to impact was the aircraft saying "I'm about to let go." Terribly sad, and I am sure there is more to it than simply PE.