For the military aircraft buffs ...

....and straight into prison for 14 years.

 

He got off lightly then?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sknyliv_airshow_disaster

On June 24, 2005, a military court sentenced pilot Volodymyr Toponar and
co-pilot Yuriy Yegorov to fourteen and eight years in prison,
respectively. The court found the two pilots and three other military
officials guilty of failing to follow orders, negligence and violating
flight rules. Two of the three officials were sentenced to up to six
years in prison, and the last official received up to four years. In
addition, Toponar was ordered to pay 7.2 million hryvnia ($1.42 million;
¤1.18 million) in compensation to the families, and Yegorov another 2.5
million hryvnia.

 

"Oh, and DFC!"

 

In that case, it must have been a fucking weird question.

 

Wonder what the violated orders were?
"You vill not crash zis aircraft". Which I think is a given.
Or had they deliberately tried the maneouvre too low to the ground?
And how does that involve the copilot?
Or did said officials order them down low to give a good show?
In which case, is the pilot really at fault? (Yes, he shouldn't have
done it if he thought the maneouvre could be unrecoverable, but
still.)
I'm just trying to figure out how 5 people can be guilty of the crash.

 

Possibly unauthorised manoeuvres, certainly performing said manoeuvres
in the direction of the crown, which I believe is the first rule of
Air Shows.

You think he just sits there and lets the pilot do everything? No, he
will take an active part on planning and performing the stunt
sequences.

Me too. Sounds like there must have been more people involved than
that.

 

I think it only became in the direction of the crowd once the wingtip
clipped the ground. Misjudging his recovery height from the maneouvre,
yeah. Without knowing alll the details, hard to tell. You only need
one little system glitch at that height and you're toast.

As for the comment about copilot, he is usually running radio and
weapons systems and navigating. I doubt he'd have much input into low
level (or even high level) combat maneouvres. Back seat driver
syndrome. I'm happy to be presented with evidence to the contrary, but
at the pace you have to make split-second decisions I just can't
imagine he'd have input. "Can well pull up in .05 seconds please?"
"Nyet, I'm just going to wait another .02 seconds", doesn't seem to
work for me.

 

Not so. OK, think about it the other way round - he should only have
been doing these stunts facing _away_ from the crowd, so such an
event, with a <90deg re-direction, should have no possibility of
impact the crowd.

Really? Well I'm sure the relevant authorities will be keen to hear
your opinions. Me, I'd tend to assume that they, unlike us, would have
had access to all the evidence.

 

To mee it looked like the maneouvre was taking place parrallel to the
crowd, along the line of the runway. You're not suggesting the should
to touch and goes at right angles to the runway (yeah, I know, a touch
and go is a totally different thing than what they were up to here).

I don't have opinions one way or the other on that one. My
understanding is the PIC has control of maneouvres the aircraft
undertakes. Sure they have to work as a team, but at the timeframes
these decisions are taken, I can't see how it can come down to
anything but the pilot's miscalculation. If he was ordered to do it,
he also miscalculated by obeying those orders.

 

Can he kick the pilot in the kidneys?

I'm quite surprised they didn't get lynched on the ground.

 

I doubt he'd be able to lift his foot off the cockpit floor under
those G's, let alone kick anything

Yeah - I noticed the guy walk up and pat him on that back and make
sure he was OK.

Not sure how to handle that. I think most people would have been in
shock. It's not as if he did it deliberately. To be quite honest I'm
amazed he managed to get out; things went wrong very low. Zero/zero
systems obviously work very well these days.

 

Grew some air.