Many people have been killed and injured at the Reno Air Races. It was a vintage plane (reportedly a Mustang) and things can go wrong. The rocket racers will be more modern, and presumably safer, but there will be a lot of emotional arguments against allowing a crowd anywhere near them after this.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s some video. Looks to me like it could have been a lot worse — the pilot seems to have tried to minimize the damage. I’d hope do the same in similar circumstances — I suspect it’s a natural reaction. You don’t want to die, but you don’t want to fly into a crowd, either.
The local news in Las Vegas is showing it. It was the Galloping Ghost, a P-51 that has been racing since the Cleveland air races in the late 1940’s. The pilot, Jimmy Leeward, is a legend who has been racing since the 1970’s. This is indeed tragic.
One of the other videos shows the plane going into a steep climb and rolling over before it hits at a 80ish degree angle.
Video removed. Got another link?
Not right now, no.
I understand your statement about emotions, but spectators have been killed during the Indy 500 and at NASCAR events. When you get metal moving that fast, sometimes it release energy in a bad location. Still, there has been improvements in fence barriers at auto racing events. I’m not sure what you can do at Reno. Perhaps a Lexan dome?
I think this is the fourth air show this year with fatalities, though I think only pilots died in the others.
Just like NASCAR, any kind of racing is dangerous and sometimes takes out some spectators. It wouldn’t stop me from attending an air show.
Vey sad. Looks like loss of elevator control. I picked a good year to skip out on Reno. I had meant to take my son for his first time and take him into the pit area. A friend of my family was pulling some strings to try and get me an up close with Skip Holm. Last time I skipped it the Pond Racer bit the dirt. The debate over the rocket racing league will be interesting, new airframes should be safer than the old birds flying in Reno. ( though much of what’s in them isn’t quite original WWII stuff). Not sure which makes the bigger crater, P-51 with high octane gas, or rocket racer with isopropyl/peroxide? finally, prayers for the dead and living. Amazing to see how fast it all changed. Top of barrel roll to impact right around a second, and then everything is taken. Unbelievable.
Mr. Simberg,
A death in racing is never something to be taken lightly, especially when it involves a member of the public who is there as a spectator. Pilots or “drivers” take the risk of loss of life because it is part of the sport they have chosen to compete in. Spectators take a risk of injury as well to a degree when they attend a high speed race, such as NASCAR, INDY CAR, OFF ROAD Racing or Air Shows, such as the Reno Air Race. I know, I have been involved in racing my entire life and have seen a number of my friends pass-away while enjoying their sport and putting on a “show” for fans.
As for the safety of an Air Show, whether it be a Rocket Racing League event, OshKosh, Red Bull or Reno – it is the first priority of the events and the FAA to assure the safety of the spectators and the pilots. There has not been a spectator fatality at a US air show in the past 30 years and the tragedy at Reno is, therefore, an extremely rare occurrence. Reno, in particular, is a racing event that the Rocket Racing League has spent a great deal of time studying as they have always show great leadership and superior attention to putting on a safe race and a great entertainment property. Mike Houghton was one of our original Board Advisors and his team is outstanding.
In closing, I will submit that the article you have written is off base. It is not that the race in Reno will be bad for the Rocket Racing League at all. Hopefully it will be something we all can learn from to make our sport, the Air Show industry, even safer for all involved. Modern technology will go a long way to help this of course, but the FAA has a great group of people guiding the rules and safety decisions on air show logistics and I am confident that they will continue to help guide all Air Show events in a positive direction to ensure the safest events possible while providing fun entertainment platform as well as educational environment for fans everywhere.
My personal prayers go out to the families who lost loved ones yesterday at Reno and to Jimmy Leeward & his family and team.
Sincerely,
Granger Whitelaw
Co-Founder
Rocket Racing League
Another consideration will be how this affects Red Bull Air Races, which was already taking a year off because of a few close calls. No offense to the long tradition of Reno Air Races, but the Red Bull Air Races were becoming more popular with world wide TV coverage and race locations. Any of the air races; Reno, Red Bull, or Rocket; will be good for advancing aeronautics.
It probably isn’t quite fair to call an unlimited class racer old as the things are rebuilt and re-engineered to within an inch of their lives. She may have been a Mustang, but not as your grandpa flew her.
My condolences to the pilots family and to the injured. Race and display flying are not ‘safe’ sports, but ‘safe’ should not be a primary goal in life anyway.
Race and display flying are not ‘safe’ sports
To put the risks into perspective:
17.5 million Americans attend airshows every year. There have been no spectator injuries for many years. According to latest reports, three of those were killed and 50 injured this year.
During a two-year study period, 10.5 million Americans went horseback riding. Although no one has exact figures, it appears that around 200 people are killed by horses every year. Many of those deaths are equine professionals who spend a lot more time around horses than casual riders, but not all of them by any means.
Also remember that crashes are not the only risk at airshows, or even the largest risk. Whenever you have 17.5 million people attending outdoor events, you are going to have heat stroke, auto accidents, slips and falls, etc.
I saw someone collapse from a heart attack at Reno.
At a 2001 airshow in Van Nuys, over 50 people were reportedly hospitalized for heat stroke. (More likely heat exhaustion, but heat stroke is what was reported.)
At a Huntsville airshow in 2008, a six-year-old boy was killed and 13 people injured when a tent blew over.
Those are just a couple examples that I found with a few minutes of Googling. I’m sure that most incidents don’t even make the news.
Heat injuries are probably the biggest concern at airshows because most shows take place during warm weather and most people don’t think to bring water. Then a lot of them will refuse to pay $5 a bottle for water because it is “expensive.” Yet, many of the same people will gladly pay $5 for a beer which contributes to dehydration.
Edward, so right. Those people are trying out for a Darwin award. You can’t take risk out of life nor, I believe, should we want to.
Caveat Utilitor
Here’s a video link (via Drudge) that’s still working. It doesn’t show a lot of detail, though.
I’ve seen still photos around the net taken before the crash which show that one of the elevator trim tabs had partially detached, and that the tail wheel had deployed. Does anyone have any idea what might have caused both of those things to happen? I would assume that it must have been something inside the tail section.
Tragic. But risks are a part of life.
The one thing i always hope for with things like that is that there wont be some knee-jerk overreaction by media, authorities and regulators.
Reminds me of a crash I heard about with a Cessna 152 that lost elevator control. A frayed battery cable arched onto the linkage to the horizontal stabilizer and it snapped in two. I believe a improperly secured battery is what brought that artic B-29 recovery to a fiery end too.
I’ve found videos from two different angles (search youtube: reno crash angle – then look for high number of views). One shows the flight line with planes flying by then a look left just as the plane is diving near the stands. Impact is hidden by a person standing, but the immediate aftermath is seen.
The second angle shows much more of the final moments of flight. From that angle, I don’t think I see an elevator issue (at first). It looks like the plane enters a roll then at inversion the aircraft pitchs toward the ground. It’s like the pilot decided to pull up (which was down at the time) at the wrong time.
I wonder if something was wrong with the pilot prior to impact.
Kudos to the announcer for keeping his wits, but still, it’s nice to see people running towards the impact to try and help.
I have to agree with Granger. This isn’t going to have an effect on Rocket Racing, or on air races or airshows. The first fatality at an airshow was in 1910, and there have been major accidents in which tens of spectators have died ever since. Some famous ones include the TU-144 crash at the Paris Airshow in 1973 which killed 6, and the Italian Air Force crash at Ramstein in 1988 that killed 67 on the ground.
Having had some involvement in this sort of thing, I can say that people tend to overestimate how the public reacts to accidents — even those involving the crowd. Nervous Nellys will refrain from attending for a couple of years, but will eventually forget.
For some reason, however, space aficionados have this idea that *any* accident will be the end of manned spaceflight. We have a fair amount of data to the contrary by now, with a couple of Soyuz and Shuttle LOC events. But airshow history shows that the public brushes off carnage on the ground, as well.
Mfk,
The reason folk are worried is that a similar crash in 1949 at the National Air Races in Cleveland ended the races until they were restarted in Reno in 1964.
BTW as an interesting historical note the Galloping Ghost was participating in that race and the Mustang which crashed had just passed it earlier in the lap.
With that said I actually think this may have the opposite effect then Rand states in the headline. If the National Air Races are put on hold for a year or two while procedures are revised their will be a gap that Rocket Racing could easily fill while the fans wait for the Nationals to restart.
I’ve finally heard more from eyewitness. To the extent possible, I retract any sentiment that something may have been wrong with the pilot. The understanding I have now is he issued a mayday and witnesses reported seeing a part of the elevator trim tab come off prior to the crash.
In this photo, it does appear that the trim tab is missing. It’s too soon to know if that caused the accident or if something that happened earlier caused the trim tab to come off. Without the trim tab, it’s possible the plane was uncontrollable.
A photo yesterday showed the tail wheel down which is pretty puzzling, perhaps indicating a failure somewhere in the aft fuselage or tail section.
That’s what I said, Larry, a few comments up. The photo I saw showed the trim tab partly detatched.
Link
There was also an enlarged version on the site yesterday.
I don’t envy the folks at the NTSB. The wreckage is so pulverized there isn’t much to work with. I wouldn’t even know where to start.
But since the trim tab came off before the crash, it should be more or less intact. Hopefully they’ll be able to learn something from it.
That photo on your link is too small for me to judge anything. I can’t tell if the tab is missing, partially detached or if the actuator had failed which might’ve caused the tab to fully deflect. Most likely, it did come off.
AvWeb has another photo this morning where the pilot isn’t visible in the cockpit. It did have this that might explain it (emphasis added):
What is known is that Leeward had rounded the last pylon before the long straightaway in front of the grandstand when his aircraft pitched up, rolled and dove almost vertically into the cement just on the edge of the box seating area. Reports say Leeward called a single Mayday. There have been suggestions that Leeward attempted to maneuver away from the seating area, sparing many lives. As of mid-morning Saturday, the casualty count stood at nine dead and almost 60 injured, 15 critically. There was an incident during the 1998 Reno Air Races in which a trim tab came off a P-51 named Voodoo Chile. In that incident, also mentioned in AVweb’s coverage, the aircraft pitched violently up, causing pilot Bob Hannah to black out under a G load estimated at 10 Gs. He regained consciousness at 9,000 feet and was able to land safely.
If the tab came off, there could’ve been a violent pitchup, perhaps into a high speed stall. It’s also possible the pilot suffered GLOC if he suddenly pulled upwards of 10 Gs without warning.
the aircraft pitched violently up, causing pilot Bob Hannah to black out under a G load estimated at 10 Gs. He regained consciousness at 9,000 feet
Contrary to this article, blackout is not the same as GLOC.
Blackout is a complete loss of vision, due to decrease blood flow to the eyes at high gees. A partial loss of vision is called grayout. GLOC is gee-induced loss of consciousness.
It’s possible that Jimmy Leeward was blacked out or GLOCed. If he was blacked out, it’s possible he was disoriented (unable to determine the attitude of his airplane).
I’m trying to think through the pilots possible actions. The first response to any problem at Reno is to get some altitude. In this case the malfunction with the elevator may have assisted with this, however this pullup was much steeper than others I have seen that had happier endings. So possibly the failure with elevator/pitch control is cascading during the pullup and very high G’s are being induced. The pilot is being crushed into his seat right now and may have lost consciousness. The plane is now going vertical and will soon stall and do one of number of possible things. In no particular order… 1. Tail slide. 2. Continue the pitch input and reverse the direction of travel into a loop. 3. Add a roll input to invert the aircraft and continue on the existing vector of travel. ( barrel roll at the
top of the ascent) and complete the loop going down. It looks to me like some variant of #3 happened. I would speculate that consciousness was lost in the pullup, the roll input seen in the videos at the top of the pullup was a result of the P-factor from the prop still under high throttle settings overwhelming the roll response of the aircraft. As the plane starts diving downward and is gaining speed incredibly fast, it losses the roll and dives straight into the ground before any other of the aerodynamic forces can do anything to avoid the inevitable. Just my 2 cents on this sad event.
I’ve just heard that analysis of the crash footage showed that the pilot’s seat had broken. There wasn’t anyone left in the cockpit! Before the race they’d mentioned they did some work on the controls. I wonder if it involved removing and replacing the seat (making me also wonder if somebody forgot to reinstall some bolts)?
I assume the elevator trim tab, tail wheel, and any other mysterious things occured when part of the structure broke loose, yanking controls and control cables in ways they were never meant to be yanked.
George Turner:
I just came here to mention the same thing.
An alternative possibility is that the trim tab broke off first, causing an abrupt climb as mentioned above. Then the excessive g-force may have caused the seat to break loose. But that doesn’t explain the tailwheel.
One thing I just now noticed is that the whole trim tab didn’t come off; just the inboard 2/3 of it. The outboard 1/3 is still attached and appears to be deflected downward. This can be seen in the Tim O’Brien photo linked above by Larry J, as well as the one I saw at the KOLO-TV website. I can’t find it there now, but I snagged it and linked it here on Saturday.
Here is a series of photos that shows that the tailwheel was extended during the plane’s vertical climb.
The photos that showed the trim tab breaking off were during the roll. Which means that the trim tab did not initiate the sequence of events.
This may lend credence to George’s explanation. If Leeward had his hand on the stick and the seat broke loose, it could have caused him to jerk it back suddenly.
Well, if the seat broke loose both he and anything else attached to the seat would produce some bizarre control inputs, then a complete lack thereof. I don’t know the mechanics of the elevator trim tab on the P-51, but from the failure mode I suspect that there is a cable run to the cockpit that if pulled hard enough will rip the inboard section of the tab right off the elevator.
If the suggested scenario is right, the root cause shouldn’t be hard to reconstruct from the scattered debris, which probably won’t have the number of seat bolts you’d normally expect to be either intact (ripped out) or sheared off (with nuts still attached) or else some major parts will show fatigue failure.
Perhaps this is yet another reason that NASA is spending engineering time studying the metalurgy of office chair failures.