You can also add the tragic loss of John Day in his Fokker Eindecker whilst practising for his display with the Great War Display Team in 2014.

I'm not trying to be controversial or belittle the seriousness of yesterday's accident, just trying to show that life is risky. I get really fed up with the inevitable knee-jerk reaction that has been espoused on here. The stats (before yesterday) would suggest that the only danger from air shows is to those doing the display flying. Maybe we have been lucky; or maybe the rules work pretty well. I for one would not wish to see air shows banned, but would support well intentioned and well thought through regulation.

Why do people keep critisising or spouting statistics for airshows and displaying vintage aircraft? They are there and they should be flown and watched by people who want to do so. What is unacceptable is people not associated with the activity being killed.

Expert commentary at its best
Shoreham Airshow Crash 'Horrifically Unlikely'


Jon

Leon was right, his committee did the right thing, paid a little extra and had a side road and footpath close. More difficult in this case - so the airshow should have been planned so that the main road was not overflown at all. Surely good planning isn't too much to ask. Then if there's a disaster, its only the pilot (usually) who suffers. One can imagine new regulations that ban overflight of any road that can't be closed as well of course as civilian houses.

I suspect that CAP 403 will need to strengthen this paragraph for roads and public rights of way closure:

"At many events, particularly at airfield sites, the congregation of spectators, outside the airfield boundary, on the live-side, may give organisers cause for concern. Neither the Police nor the Local Authority has the power to remove these people, especially if they have the permission of the landowner upon whose land they are congregating. It is recommended that the Event Organiser anticipates this during the planning process and takes necessary steps to reduce it by, where possible, blocking the view from obvious vantage points. Consideration should also be given to notifying landowners (or over water, pleasure boat owners) of the risks of allowing spectators to watch the display/event from their land/vessel. Landowners/owners should be advised that they have a liability to protect the public from obvious and anticipated risks at public events, and, in the event of an accident, they could be held liable for injuries to spectators on the property. It is advised that professional legal advice on such notification is taken prior to action."

I was looking for something similar in the MAA's Display Flying Handbook but it appears to be being rewritten. I seem to recall there being a line about considering gatherings of the local populace outside the spectators enclosures and how they must be cosnidered in the display planning.

LJ

Just out of idle curiosity, can anyone who has displayed at this venue previously confirm that this is the case i.e the public road is within the "display permitted area". Never been to, or flown into Shoreham.

Ta.

I am sure none of us want to see airshows banned. I for one thought after the loss of Hoof Proudfoot and the Lightning,then the Barton Mosquito crash that possibly less 'agressive' flying be undertaken. We all love to see old aircraft flying, but not necessarily to their service limits. I know the Hunter is more than capable , but just to see and hear it is enough, without it being pushed too far? My condolences to all who lost their lives.

Yup, A27 goes through the display area and also Lancing College is pretty close by as well. At either end you have the towns of Shoreham and Lancing with loads of houses. It's all a bit tight in my humble opinion when 1/2 mile away is the open sea.

This BBC picture shows the site. The runway is normally the display axis that parallels the crowd line and then for fast jets you are at least 230m from the crowd that would put you over the A27. The spectator's areas are roughly where the mown square is on the bottom right hand edge of the picture.

http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cps...p_shoreham.jpg

LJ

Romeo Oscar Golf
 

no, ROG, I mean Altitude. I'll simplify it if you like: If you are close to the ground and you point deliberately at the ground, the margins for error are reduced. That is obvious, even if you are a bit thick, and I don't need to back this up with stats.

Your point about all these guys being highly trained ignores one important point, that too many of them ignore gate heights and end up screwing it. I've supervised a few displays as it happens, and know what I'm talking about. You're wrong. :mad:

Satellite Driver,
With Sussex Police now suggesting 11 dead, can you please explain, as a barrister, the likely current police investigation and its potential implications for online speculation?
Thank you.

@XV490: Sorry, but no. It would be very premature and quite professionally inappropriate of me to do so.

The most I can do is echo what others have said about the police's responsibility to secure evidence of what is at the very least a serious fatal accident.

Thank you. I hadn't meant to suggest you say any more than that.
This will indeed be a very complex combination of investigations.

S Driver, thanks for your post re risk, spot on. It is the point that the casualties had no "stake" in the event and were going about their private lives that will/could be a "game changer" re the perception of risk at future shows. With the exception of seaside shows, many bigger shows need transport infrastructure to get the punters in and out of the location. Its going to be a balancing act re the acceptable risk to those who are using the roads etc to get from A to B. The balance may come in altering the nature of flying whilst over such areas?

There is always something at a show site, Duxford has the M11 at the end of the runway and on the display line... Where do you stop?
East Midlands has the M3 motorway at the end of the runway and has had a 737 end up on it, do you stop traffic on there during normal airport operations? Heathrows approach is even worse over built up areas, do you move everyone out?
It's all about risk, and every time an aircraft flies a risk is there.

Surely, the risks are far higher re an aircraft flying aerobatics compared to straight and level? Reducing the risk by changing the nature of the display whilst over such areas would seem and obvious avenue?

So if two of the eleven killed were actually air show spectators, because they were in a different risk category is their loss less tragic, worthy of sympathy, consideration or of compensation than the others who were just passing by? Is this an insurance consideration? What is the significance of a risk category?

Yep, I was waiting for someone else to say it as I understand my utterances may be verboten to some..

Sometimes it's far better just to walk away and start afresh...

And there are what by consensus are likely to be judged acceptable and unacceptable risks

Public transport, airfreight, defence, SAR, training, emergency service ops are, IMO, likely to be considered "essential" by most.

Display flying rather less so.

Probable insurance hikes could be a wet blanket on a lot of shows......

Any of you guys with display experience in comparable aircraft have any views on the selected figure which went wrong?
The initial approach was fast and low down the A axis from north to south. Logic would dictate that the only manoeuvre suitable on that axis would be a straight loop. The quarter clover that appears to have been carried out was commenced well before the field boundary and exited at 90 degrees to the A axis going roughly NW, well to the north of the display box which strikes me as an extremely odd selection, as the exit would have been towards the higher terrain at crowd right, and be barely visible to the main crowd line.
If the figure had been commenced at crowd centre, with a left roll, the aircraft would have bust the 230m line heading towards the crowd, which makes even less sense.
The manoeuvre does appear from the very clear video evidence to have been premeditated, but because of the lack of logic, maybe a subtle control problem cannot be ruled out yet?
I speak as a civvie display pilot (piston, not jet) of some years standing and a mate of the pilot.

If being an innocent bystander makes a difference, then surely that applies to other events?

I loath football, yet it continues.

Many have died in stadiums, but many more have been killed/injured by hooligans ouside of stadiums/in bars/train stations etc and the general level of negative impact on the outside world by vile football fans is enormous.

Would you ban it because of this?

The only way to make aviation completely safe is to stop it.
This accident is no surprise. Nobody tried to make aviation completely safe.
An accident was always going to happen eventually, that is the nature of probability.
One accident is not too many, that is merely another vacuous statement that comes along with "you can't put a price on life"

Yes you can, and the world does every day.


Those who recommend making the displays more tame miss the point. Old duffers may watch vintage planes nimble around with a terry eye, but the young want excitement.
Tame displays is just a slow death for air displays.
People want excitement, and frankly though nobody seems to admit it, they want danger.

This western obsession with risk aversion is the slow death of our civilisation in my opinion.

@Genstabler:

The significance is the perception by the public, or more likely by the press or politicians. Like it or not, and whatever the objective considerations of risk tell us, this incident will attract added attention because complete bystanders were involved. I think it would have attracted a lot of attention even if all the casualties were spectators who might be deemed to have placed themselves at risk (although when I'm behind the crowd line at a display, I assume that the risk is well-managed and very small). But here, there are factors that will amplify public concern, or at least what the media calls public concern.

I certainly don't think flying displays should be banned. I enjoyed them when I went to Farnborough in the late 70s and early 80s, and I enjoyed them today. It would be very sad indeed only to see historic aircraft as museum exhibits.

But, flying displays have risk: risk for the pilots, risk for the spectators, and, as yesterday's events have shown, risk for bystanders. That risk, especially for spectators and bystanders, is small but not negligible. Remember, risk is defined as the product of likelihood and severity of the consequence, and the consequences of something going wrong at an airshow can be very bad indeed.

You deal with risk in various ways (sometimes called the PRAT model):

Prevent - the only way to prevent risk from air displays is to stop doing them.

Reduce - you reduce the risk by making incidents less likely (careful preparation) and my mitigating the consequences (safe display boxes).

Accept - by and large the risk to display pilots, having been reduced as much as it can be in the circumstances, is accepted.

Transfer - typically by insurance, but whilst this is appropriate for purely financial risks no amount of liability insurance is going to make airshow accidents publicly acceptable.

In short, the only real way, short of stopping air displays (and again, I would hope that never happens) is to reduce the risk. We've done a lot to reduce the risk and I think the statistics since Farnborough in 1952 speak for themselves. But, in light of this accident and the Gnat crash three weeks ago, I can well imagine that there will be pressure on the relevant authorities to look again at how we regulate displays of those aircraft that pose a higher risk in the event of accident, and that will include fast jets.

Perspective from the air
 

The smallness of Shoreham airfield inevitably results in most of a fast-jet display being well outside the airfield boundaries, but there may be another problem from the pilot's viewpoint.

Without suggesting that it has any relevance to this particular accident, one of the significant features of Shoreham is the shortness of its only paved runway (about 3400 ft). Nothing unusual about that for the average GA pilot, but the resulting perspective from the air is very different from that at many airshow venues, not to mention the airfields where fast jets have to be based. If the runway is also narrower than the standard width at such airfields, as I think may be the case at Shoreham, a pilot could easily overestimate his/her height above the airfield when relying on visual cues. **

Some displays, of course, take place over grass airfields, farms, beaches, sea, etcetera (or even below cliffs). But in those cases the FJ pilot knows full-well that he is manoeuvring in a strange environment.

** I'm not suggesting that display pilots are not well aware of the above!

There are two main threads to this accident:

a. An aircraft crashed. Why did it crash?
b. An aircraft crash killed uninvolved individuals on the ground. How adequate are/were the safety procedures and regulations pertaining to air displays?

Sorry for stating the bleeding obvious but I thought it worthwhile.

Cows - your second point is completely relevant. Totally innocent, uninvolved people have been killed because of a sport/hobby which others take part in knowing the risk. As I have stated previously, this is not just a tragedy, it's an outrage for the victims and families involved.

Go tell that to the families. There is no war in Sussex. Yes, people can be killed in road accidents and all these drivers would know that. However, this is at least 11 uninvolved people killed in an accident caused by a failure of procedures or mechanical systems by people involved in an airshow. It is unacceptable and a crime.

With you all the way on this one Strake - it is criminal. People just driving along a road should not die because of the enjoyment or risk-taking of others. The really difficult part for me is knowing they could quite safely do a display a few hundred yards away on the beach...

A crime? Seriously? Please define the breach of criminal legislation you feel has been committed?

Tourist in usual, incisive, Tourist posts; quell surprise that it's 2015; eh?

I think one of the easiest way to negate some risk at airshows, is to put a complete ban on spectators outside the showground/airfield (within a certain distance of the airfield/show boundaries).


'Naughty Fields' are often directly under display lines, and ironically, spectators are at far more risk outside the controlled spectator areas inside the display area, due to the 170/230M lines enforced in there. As are the display pilots should they have any trouble with their mounts.


There will be some tightening up of regulations as a consequence of this tragedy. It will be interesting to see what happened to venues like Duxford/Waddington which have major roads at the end of their runways, similar to Shoreham. It would be difficult to shut such roads down for the duration of their shows?


TO

Davef68 - I'm pretty sure Strake is referring to criminal negligence. You can't hold an airshow, kill people and expect to just say 'Terribly sorry old chap...'

Well summed up.

In my view this airshow should be given the choice of moving to the sea-front or accepting restriction to more suitable, manoeuvrable aircraft if it chooses to stay where it is.

I would have thought the 'Health & Safety at Work act 1974' for starters, unless of course all involved can prove they took all reasonable precautions to prevent.... etc etc.


Either way, people have been killed and injured. It goes without saying that thoughts are with both the family's and friends of all involved and hoping for a speedy recovery for the injured.

Am I right in thinking that the Hunter was a relatively benign aircraft? When I think of the attrition rates of say the lightning and Meatbox.

So 11 people die, and possibly more by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Oh wait, they were in the right place at the right time.

The Hunter was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

What law you ask, I would suggest the families will be advised of that quite soon.

Are Air show organisers and the pilots involved not liable to UK Criminal Negligence laws ?

And I do realise this opens a whole can of worms.

Does anyone sign off display profiles?

Is there a concept of peer-review?

Genuinely interested not trying to be controversial

All good points but surely we should let the experts do their thing and if blame is to be apportioned Im sure they will do so.
I would amagine the legal Carrion Crows will be lining up already.

Perhaps a legal precedent?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_M5_motorway_crash

Lots of calls for heads to roll but it was thrown out.

Too early to speculate on Shoreham, until it is known what happened.

New video footage of the flight path prior taken from near the impact point on the A27:

Shoreham air crash: Man films Hunter hitting A27 road - BBC News