Two weekends ago was the culmination of Seafair 2005, a celebration of airplanes, boats, and other mechanical widgets. Every year, the Blue Angels come and perform their air acrobatics for the crowds. The Angels practice during the end of the week, and perform on Saturday and Sunday. Their performance entails flying over the city when doing approaches, formations, and other tricks.
Now, if you've ever seen the Blue Angels, you know they are very skilled. You need to have quite a bit of skill to fly an F/A-18 Hornet mere inches from each other in a set formation, and to maneuver in sequence with the other planes.
That said, accidents happen. A crash happened as recently as 1999, killing two Angels as one plane was landing. The article references a prior accident in 1990, and a fatality in 1985. The total number of Blue Angel pilots killed in air shows or training is 23.
While these accidents are not common, they put at risk not only the pilots but those on the ground. If a pilot loses control while flying over an urban area, how many other lives will be lost as the plane hits the ground?
Air shows are not safe, in my opinion. Case in points are made here, here, here, and here. And, when you have an air show over a heavily populated area, the chance for accidents grows. I'm not against having air shows, but can't we have them in less populated areas?
Update (4/24/2007): I just learned of an accident in South Carolina. According to the details collected on a Wikipedia article on the crash, the Blue Angels were flying in a show in Beaufort, South Carolina, and during the show, Lieutenant Commander Kevin Davis's F/A-18 Hornet went down. Details as to the reason for the crash won't be released for a few weeks, but a local article on the crash does report that houses in the vicinity of the crash caught fire.
I'm truly sorry for the crash and for the loss of life. That said I do hope this incident causes air show organizers and the Blue Angels to re-evaluate some safety procedures and flight plans to ensure safety for both the pilots and those on the ground.
12 comments:
You'd be surprised at the amount of thought given to air show performance boxes and crowd placement (in the U.S., some other countries are a LOT more laissez faire about it). Of course, there's always potential for an accident, but, for the most part, air show pilots are competent and highly trained - most will risk their own life and not eject from an out of control airplane to steer it away from a crowd. Many popular air shows have moved the most dangerous of their acts out over water (I believe that the Blue Angels display in Seattle takes place over the Lake, right? Their display in Florida takes place over the ocean).
As for aircraft accidents overflying populated areas, the alternative, with the growing sprawl of the world population, is to halt all air travel completely. It doesn't really seem like a valid option. The nightmare scenario is, of course, an airliner crashing into a skyscraper or a shopping mall. If you think about the percentage of the earth's surface area occupied by dense buildings (and a crash occuring at the time of day when the buildings are in use), you can do the probability of that type of disaster happening all other things being equal and find its minutely low... of course, with the prospect of terrorists using an airliner as a cruise missile, those probabilities chage.
From: http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050826/NEWS01/508260450/0/ZONES01
"Saturday, two of [the Air Force Thunderbirds'] F-16 fighter jets touched wings in flight in Chicago, jettisoning a missile rail into Lake Michigan..."
"...about once a year, an air show incident results in a fatality."
"'One little slip can be catastrophic,' said Lt. John Allison, a Blue Angels pilot who is narrating this year's show. 'It's a dangerous business.'"
Agreed, folks take care to make sure risk is minimized. But that doesn't obviate that flyovers happen over urban areas (even not during the stunts), and mistakes can happen
Sure, airline flights fly over cities every day. I'd be interested to compare the MTBF between an airline jet and an F-18, however.
They fly, on average, 3-4 times a day during their year of training before they are on the demonstration team. Now, look at how few accidents there have been....not such a big ratio now is it?
The Blue Angels are scary? Hardly! While the Blue Angels might appear to be a dare-devil bunch of pilots to the untrained eye, they are in fact a very precise, well trained and extremely professional group of pilots that show-case the precision and power of the United States Navy.
While I understand that many of the maneuvers that they fly are in fact very dangerous, these manevuers are covered in a rigorous training syllabus during the winter months at N.A.S. El Centro, California. In addition, after the team is qualified for the upcoming airshow season, each performance is taped from many different locations and reviewed with a fine tooth comb, so to speak, so that such things as safety precautions and formation placement can be reviewed and imporved upon so that the show not only looks better but is flown with a higher degree of safety.
In addition, the FAA has in place many different regulations and rules regarding jet team performances over crowds and highly populated areas.
With that in mind, it only comes as a natural fear for some that something bad could happen. However, as an unwritten rule, I think we all need to realize that when we are dealing with very powerful jet aircraft in front of lots of people, the risk of something bad happening is always there. As a result, anyone that attends an airshow should realize that their entering a show is actually willingly putting themselves in danger for viewing of potentially dangerous subjects.
JB... is that you?
Anonymous, yes it's a low ratio. My point is that it can be lessened even more by repositioning where the pilots practice and perform.
Rob, you juxtapose yourself. First, "[the Blue Angels] are in fact a very precise, well trained and extremely professional group of pilots...", and then "...anyone that attends an airshow should realize that their entering a show is actually willingly putting themselves in danger for viewing of potentially dangerous subjects." Is your point that the Blue Angels are safer than other air show pilots? If so, read my references in the original post. If not, then what is your point?
over 1.5 million spectators and how many injuries for the Blue Angels? Driving from Lynnwood to Everett has worse odds than that! How do you get around?
sorry for the mis-quoted number of spectators - the correct number is 15 million annually. Odds are pretty low for accidents.
Indeed, the risk of injury is lower than driving. But changing where the Angels fly and practice is something easy to alter. Changing how people drive at a large scale is not.
If you take the time to go and look at the first example of why airshows are dangerous (here) then you would see a long list of dates and times that mishaps occur. It even makes airshows look dangerous and unnecessary. Then again, if you listed out every car accident that occurred in the same time frame you could make a case of getting rid of cars because they are two dangerous. I would even say that daily driving in San Diego, LA or Washington DC is more dangerous that demonstration flying.
I know there is risk everywhere in the world. Unfortunately, cars have won out over public transportation in this country, and cars are a much less safe way of going from point A to point B. But they are a necessary part of life in most of the U.S. (save places where it's easy to get around by bus, train, or subway, like New York City).
My point in this post is to claim that the Blue Angels are an unnecessary part of life. They're for pure show. As a result, changing how they do their display (namely by doing their show away from populated places), we remove an unnecessary risk.
If the recent accident had occurred when one of the planes was flying over the city, where some of the densest neighborhoods exist, it would have been a catastrophe. I simply don't want to run that risk.
Yeah...but...if you make them perform farther away from populated areas then people will have to drive farther. This would increase the exposure time to more auto accidents wouldn't it?
I hope you don't cook George. Cooking uses fire and sharp utensils. Both of which are very dangerous and cause numerous injuries throughout the world each year. I hope we can get rid of those scary things.
I find it strange that years ago, when the rules around U.S. airshows weren't as stringent. There were more accidents that killed and hurt spectators. They used to race airplanes directly over Ohio for crying out loud. But very few people seemed to complain, they were enthralled by the idea of flight. Obviously the accidents became a problem and people did speak up. There has not been a spectator fatality in the U.S. for over 50 years. Yet people seem to complain about the dangers more than ever.
I guess I'll have your types to thank for the perfectly sterile world that we will live in one day. When we are all surprised when someone dies of old age because we didn't realize how dangerous simply living was.
You should try some risk sometime.
It's fun.
Post a Comment