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"Mass casualties" at crash at Nevada airshow

Checkmite said:
Because it was, in essence, simply a demand to "stop talking about that". Of course I ignored it.



I suppose there's a metric by which "experience might count for more than physical ability"; but it seems contrary to common sense to me - and in any case, I can actually point to written regulations which expressly define the "metric" I describe, whereas the other is a nebulous concept that can't be defined in the same way because it is dependent on subjective interpretation rather than objective observation. Yes, I always consider the latter to be more weighty than the former.
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How many hours are required for the various license levels? Can I just walk in with no flight hours and get my commercial license? So there is a metric. Just because people don't lose their license for flying too much does not mean experience is not as valuable. In fact, licenses can be lost for not flying often enough.
 
Checkmite said:
I'm sorry to put it this way, but I'm afraid you're really going to have to learn to communicate better; because upon rereading multiple times I cannot think of any way to interpret your original question, that my answer would not be a valid response to. It's pretty straight forward - the state of your "experience" doesn't affect your flight qualifications past the first issuance, while the state of your vision and reflexes has a continuous impact on them, lending those things greater importance de facto. All the experience in the world doesn't matter if you can't see properly or your body cannot respond to situations in time to avoid problems. Meanwhile, I don't see how a person who doesn't have those issues but has "only just" been awarded his license is "less trust- or otherwise-worthy" of flying an airplane when a required checkride with an FAA official has objectively established that he is perfectly capable of performing all of the actions required of a pilot.
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To bring this back to the thread, because Bob is right we are off on a tangent, there were numerous comments early on, including my own, that the age of the pilot, an 80 yr old (later turned out to be a 74 yr old), was a risk in itself. After more information was available, including the competence of this particular pilot, I changed my view. Older age alone did not automatically make a pilot a risk. Certain risks but also certain counteracting benefits go with very young and very old pilots (on the ~bell curve of pilot ages).

In the case of an older pilot, the benefit of experience counters the risks of an aging body. In the younger pilot the benefit of a youthful body could counter the risk of lack of experience.

The extensive study I cited found this very thing including a U shaped curve for accident rates by age.

Furcifer made the unsupported assertion that reflexes and eyesight of youth ALWAYS trumped the experience of age. I asked him to support that assertion. He has not.


Now both of you are adding all sorts of physical impairments from aging that would prevent an older pilot getting a pilot's license. If you are going to do that, I can just as easily add things from youth that would prevent the young person getting a pilot's license, like no experience at all. None of your comments about physical impairments that would prevent a pilot getting a license addresses my challenge of Furcifer's original assertion. The only comparison on the table is experience vs reflexes and 'better' eyesight. The comparison Furcifer made that I challenged has nothing to do with physical impairments one finds in an aged population, EXCEPT EYESIGHT AND REFLEXES.
 
LTC8K6 said:
Now they are saying his seat may have broken? That he'd have been visible in the cockpit even if passed out...
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That might depend on if he had a shoulder harness. As I read about crash survival I saw that there was an option of a lap belt alone or with a shoulder harness.
 
AdMan said:
So where is he in that picture?? It's a serious question. :confused:
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...and a fair one.

I wonder if the lack of a visible pilot in the photo could be due to a photographic characteristic. Perhaps it is saturated out by the bright sky behind, like the etched crosshairs in some of the Apollo photos. In the photo I saw, it looked like the curve of the canopy may also have been saturated out.

I am not saying this is what is going on, just tossing ideas around.
 
I'm sorry if this was brought up before but were they able to examine his body in any way to see if some sort of freak medical complication had occurred?
 
caniswalensis said:
...and a fair one.

I wonder if the lack of a visible pilot in the photo could be due to a photographic characteristic. Perhaps it is saturated out by the bright sky behind, like the etched crosshairs in some of the Apollo photos. In the photo I saw, it looked like the curve of the canopy may also have been saturated out.

I am not saying this is what is going on, just tossing ideas around.
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No pilot visible in any images after the pullup...
 

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It's possible to see the seat and a parachute in the impact video.
Just some debris that happens.
Finding anything of the pilot would be difficult.
 
LTC8K6 said:
I don't think the P-51 could hit such speeds at sea level from the factory. So that's why I think there would be greater stress and a need to strengthen parts that poke out into the airstream.

But maybe not...
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Max speed of the P-51 D was 437 mph (703 km/h)
For those who are unfamiliar with what they do, trim tabs are used to cause the airflow to deflect the Primary Flight Control surface. So, an elevator trim tab is deflected up to cause the elevator to deflect downwards, pointing the nose of the aircraft down, in relation to the relative wind.
Contrary to popular belief, the elevator does not make the plane go up; it simply raises and lowers the nose wrt the relative wind.If the elevator is in neutral position (Airplane flying level) and more power is added, the airplane will climb. Down elevator is applied to keep the plane flying at a constant altitude, and the result is more speed
So the trim tab is exposed to loading by the airflow--the higher the speed, the more force on the tab and its hinges and actuator.
And airflow is not constant--there are variations, all the time--and if you get into a flutter situation (Load variation frequency=natural frequency), the thing can go from "here to completely gone" in literally no time at all...
 
BobTheDonkey said:
Can you genuinely imagine no metric by which experience trumps physical ability when piloting an aircraft?
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I might suggest reading for comprehension. That wasn't the question that was asked.

There's plenty of scenarios where experience might trump physical ability. Unfortunately that wasn't the point that was being made.
 
Furcifer said:
I might suggest reading for comprehension. That wasn't the question that was asked.

There's plenty of scenarios where experience might trump physical ability. Unfortunately that wasn't the point that was being made.
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Perhaps you need to reread Checkmite's posts. Because that's exactly what he posted. More than once, I might add.
 
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