Gnat Display Team Crash 2015, Report out May 2016

I don’t think there are really any more useful observations to be made here.

We can only hope that his poor family are managing to put their lives back together and move on from a terrible time for them.

Sometimes the price to be paid for our ‘entertainment’ is too much to bear.

http://www.chesterchronicle.co.uk/news/chester-cheshire-news/kevin-whyman-carfest-plane-crash-13061848

The only valid opinions are those of the AAIB. Nobody else

Indeed.

Still thats my last post on the matter until the AAIB report.

Thank god for that because so far you have have hung ,drawn,quartered the pilot and been judge and jury before the report has been published.
Using your analogy about hitting people at a bus stop, well if you drive like an idiot and you know it then it’s a crime ,if however you are NOT driving like an idiot but something happens like an error of judgement [after all we are mere mortals and not perfect] and someone gets killed ,unfortunately thats an accident,an error,no malice was intended.
Lets wait for the AAIB report eh :rolleyes:

Clearly not. Let’s wait for the report please. The only valid opinions are those of the AAIB. Nobody else, no matter how well considered they may be..

Bradburger no I do not write for a newspaper and if I did I would probably be calling for Andy Hills head over the deaths caused by him or any others who serviced or maintained this aircraft. I am awaiting the report on this like others on this forum and hope it is soon and not a whitewash which I am sure the AAIB will not do.My thoughts and wishes are for the relatives of the dead only and hope they see justice for those they lost.
#73 I agree entirely with your post

I am I right in saying that you and that of post 73 fill.

If it is found by the AAIB that the Hunter crash was one of pilot error that those who maintained this aircraft are in some way to blame for said crash?

if this is your view it puts owning and operating vintage types in question its like saying if you fix my car and then I drive it outside the law and kill a group of people you are also to blame. this also would mean those who maintained the Gnat are at fault for its crash.

Well that’s sorted then. To extend the logic of your argument, an eminent, hugely experienced aviator, now sadly deceased, has proclaimed the cause of the accident. So we needn’t waste time taking evidence from hundreds of witnesses and interested parties, one of whom might even have been Captain Brown. His OPINION without recourse to any other details of the incident is just that. An opinion. The enquiry seeks to find the cause from all the facts they are able to assemble over countless hours of investigation and deliberation.

It is little more than sublime arrogance to prejudge the outcome.

And that’s my last word on this miserably dispiriting thread.

I was not going to reply any more but can I quote this later gentleman who in my opinion was the greatest pilot this country ever produced.

“Captain Eric “Winkle” Brown, a former Fleet Air Arm test pilot who has flown Hunters and was at the air show, said the most likely cause of the crash was pilot error.
He said: “At this stage if I had to make a guess I would say it was totally pilot error. I think he started the loop too low, which meant he didn’t have time to pull out when he completed the loop.
“As I was watching it I was thinking he had started to pull up too low. I’ve seen it happen two or three times at air days, it’s a pretty common pilot’s error.
When he got to the bottom of the loop he had run out of space and he was ‘mushing in’, in other words the nose of the aircraft was pointing up but it was still falling because he had lost lift.
“It’s a flat stall and you will drop like a stone when that happens.”

Any better pilots than him out ther want to argue that?

So if I drive like an idiot and plough into a bus queue and kill people its just an accident then? Still thats my last post on the matter until the AAIB report.

Yes, unless you intended to kill them, in which case it would have been a deliberate act; I actually knew someone who did that very thing, he was driving like an idiot but never intended to cause anyone harm; it’s an issue of judgement which ever way you look at it.

Can someone explain how an aircraft travelling at 300knts can have a greater rate of descent with the application of pitch (which sounds counter intuitive), and is this a known trait of the Gnat ?

If the application of pitch is such that it brings the wing past its critical angle of attack, then the flow on the top surface detaches, the lift produced by the wing decreases and because of this the effect of gravity and inertia combine to increase the rate of descent. That is a known trait of aeroplanes in general, not just the Gnat. This particular Gnat wasn’t travelling at 300 kt but even if it was, you can stall an aircraft at any speed.

So if I drive like an idiot and plough into a bus queue and kill people its just an accident then? Still thats my last post on the matter until the AAIB report.

“I would probably be calling for Andy Hills head over the deaths caused by him or any others who serviced or maintained this aircraft”

That’s a bit strong; although the final report is yet to be published, we know several things, one of which is that it wasn’t intentional, therefore it was by definition an accident.

There is no issue of “justice” here, just a very sad story.

Then I stand corrected.

Thanks Paul.

Bruce

Firebird, I read Hawk somewhere – it might have been on the Sky News link.

They must have assumed, wrongly, maybe due to the AAIB referencing the Hawk a lot in the report in terms of display comparison….?

AAIB report page 34 actually states:

The pilot of G-TIMM had not flown high performance, swept wing jet aircraft before converting onto the Gnat…..

which rules out him having flown the Hawk in the RAF.

Paul,

As the press well know, you cant call for anyone’s head until the facts are established. As you don’t know who was responsible, please stop bringing the pilots name into this. The report will determine whether any one person or group of people was to blame, which might then lead to an opportunity for prosecution, or it might not. Blame cannot always be apportioned – unless you know otherwise, it could be an accident that could not have been foreseen, and to which no blame can be attached.

Bruce

Bradburger no I do not write for a newspaper and if I did I would probably be calling for Andy Hills head over the deaths caused by him or any others who serviced or maintained this aircraft. I am awaiting the report on this like others on this forum and hope it is soon and not a whitewash which I am sure the AAIB will not do.My thoughts and wishes are for the relatives of the dead only and hope they see justice for those they lost.
#73 I agree entirely with your post

Can someone explain how an aircraft travelling at 300knts can have a greater rate of descent with the application of pitch (which sounds counter intuitive), and is this a known trait of the Gnat ?

1. It wasn’t and
2. the aircraft was more upside down than the right way up at the time

Can someone explain how an aircraft travelling at 300knts can have a greater rate of descent with the application of pitch (which sounds counter intuitive), and is this a known trait of the Gnat ?

Whilst I agree with what you both say, we still don’t know. Let’s be patient a while longer. In theory, looking at the time it took to publish the Gnat report, the ink is drying on it and it will be published soon.

Bruce

Only if the investigation turns out to show technical malfunction on the part of the aircraft. If it is deemed pilot error as the cause then it would be the pilot who did it, using the aircraft as an instrument.

T J

Correct.