This newly released photograph has raised concerns that the recent deadly crash at the Nevada air race may have been caused by a defective cockpit seat. The pilot, Jimmy Leeward, should have been seen in the cockpit even if he had passed out in the Galloping Ghost, his vintage WWII-era P-51 mustang.
Ten people were killed and 70 wounded in the horrific crash. The new theory of aviation mechanic J.R. Walker is that the seat slipped back so that Leeward lost control of the plane.
Such accidents raise complex questions of negligence. Flying was historically treated as a strict liability activity and the organizers of the race are the most obvious targets of a lawsuit as well as the estate of the plane owner. While these planes are antiques, they have to meet some minimal standards of airworthiness. If the seat is original, a product liability claim would be difficult. Accidents caused by car antiques can raise the same complexities. On one hand, they are allowed to be driven without all of the protection of modern cars and yet their owners can be sued for accidents. Insurance companies have separate policies for covering antique vehicles and that has been litigation over the scope of such policies as in Sanner v. Zurich-American Ins. Co., 657 So. 2d 252 (1995). In a Lexis/Nexis search, I could not find any case where liability turned on the reduced visibility or capability of antique cars.
The first question will be, if it was a seat malfunction, whether the seat was original or a newer retrofit to explore a product claim. However, even if the seat were new, installation could have been the cause unless there is a foreseeable misuse claim. Usually, counsel would be less interested in the pilot or his estate than “deeper pockets” who can support damages for the scores of injured or killed persons. That would focus attention on the organizer of the event in allowing plane courses to come too close to the stands or not confirming pilot or plane worthiness. It is unclear whether any elements are present in the case.
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@ Otteray Scribe
You truly know nothing about aviation, let alone physics or the P51.
You can Google ’till the cows come home… you still know nothing.
Please STFU
I had to modify my C-177 Cardinal seat rails when that AD came out. However, the difference between those civilian seat structures and a highly modified fighter plane is about the same as the difference between a lawn chair and the seat on a D-20 Caterpillar tractor.
Back in the 80’s I was flying a C-172 Skyhawk, the FAA issued an AD (mandatory maintenance) on the seat. I had to change the sliding rails and latching mechanism to a new design. Evedently the OEM rails and latches would wear and fail. The seat would slide back as the nose of the plane climbed during the take off. The pilot would hang onto the yoke as he slid back. The result was a nasty loop that ended by making a crater in the runway or corn field.
Maybe this is what happened to the Mustang?
If you look at his facebook page, there are detailed pictures of the plane being modified. There really is no seat back. This plane is modified out the $#@ for Reno. It’s like saying the seat back in my Pitts S1C failed. Not gonna happen!
“A cuban eight with a roll on the downside” sounds like –
a cigar and pastry . . .
a drink with rum, lime juice, and cola; with a pastry . . .
an uncomfortable British sex act requiring dexterity and flexibility.
Hey, all else being equal, in the early 80s, I had an amazing wonderful flight instructor. During WWII she ferried P-51s across the states to, IIRC, Newfoundland where male pilots would fly them over the ocean. She was also a powder puff derby winner, and we were told of the days before LAX was LAX that she would complete 14 turn spins over Torrance and Hawthorne.
Here’s to you Iris.
In the photo by Tim O’Brien (linked above) it shows the elevator trim tab completely gone. An earlier photo shows the tab still attached at one end, as it became detached. When an plane rolls inverted, the lift vector is down, and it is normal for the nose to “tuck” down. That is something that catches beginners off guard when taking aerobatic lessons. In fact, when inverted it takes a lot of forward stick pressure to keep the nose in a level flight attitude.
If someone saw the plane seem to waggle, that may have been due to a phenomenon called flutter. Flutter is one of those things that happens when the airspeed exceeds the design capability of the airplane. Flutter can–and has–caused airplanes to disintegrate in mid-air.
Also, a wild or runaway trim tab could cause uneven flight as it tears away.
This is what flutter looks like in a general aviation aircraft; a Piper Twin Comanche. This is one of those things you do NOT want to try yourself. The Piper in this video undoubtedly was equipped with a ballistic recovery parachute. The tail on this airplane is on the ragged edge of tearing away.
If the pilot lost elevator control, his only option to keep from doing a loop into the crowd would be to roll the plane and try a cuban eight with a roll on the downside to get the nose back up. I don’t think he was unconcious or disabled because of the manuvers he did. A sharp pull up may temporarily black out the pilot, but as soon as the gs lessen he gets back his sight.
This malfunction happened at the worst possible point in the race course, and as you can see in the videos, ALL the other planes are well away from the crowd as they pass in front. It is a bit tough to have any kind of a race that would keep a plane from having control problems at the worst time and place and still be able to be seen and be able to keep completely safe for the onlookers. One has to assume that the planes will stay under control for all of the race since it will be impossible to plan for an occurance like this.
Regarding the photo – when I first saw it, I was struck by how crisp it was – I assume that it was shot with a good quality tele lens, on a camera that was set up for shooting fast action – wide open aperture and very, very, very fast shutter (notice how the fast spinning props are crisp?) But that’s exactly the camera setup you would want at an air show/race. A good photographer, with experience shooting this kind of action would have seen/heard that something was up, swung around, locked onto the plane and taken as many shots as possible. But I don’t think that anything I’ve said proves/disproves the “refracting bubble” issue.
Big picture – any air race with stands sets up a situation where a plane could hit the stands side-on and kill many, many more people. That seems like an obvious risk that one takes when deciding to attend this sort of event. Just like standing along side a desert truck race course or a rally car course. These vehicles loose control, and if you’re near by, you may be hit and injured/killed. It’s an obvious risk you’re taking. Any plaintiff in a case like this does not want me on the jury. Caveat motorsport spectator. (The video of the pilot’s perspective shows that the planes fly over/near a residential subdivision – that would be a whole different issue if a plane crashed there.)
Possibly dumb question – right after the plane pitched up, it did some side to side “waggling” – did that seem controlled or maybe just the side effects of fighting the pull from the lost trim tab? The spectators I saw interviewed seemed to think that pulling up and then “waggling” was standard operating procedure when you had to pull out of the event. If the seat failed or the pilot was blacked out, where would the “waggle” have come from?
Also, whatever the effect was of the lost trim tab, wouldn’t that effect (i.e. pitching up) have continued consistently until the plane hit something (the ground in this case)? It looked like the plane leveled off, then pitched up, then rolled over left, then dove into the ground – not straight, but also not dramatically pitching up or rolling to either side.
In this photo:
http://www.avweb.com/newspics/reno-crash_trim-tab_tim-obrien_large.jpg
It shows the missing elevator trim tab. This was probably mid-rollover – do the control surfaces tell anything about whether the pilot was doing anything with the controls as opposed to being unconscious or flopped back from seat failure? Also, because the cockpit is in full shadow, there’s not much to see regarding the position of the pilot, unless he was wearing a brightly colored helmet or similar.
A trillion years ago, I worked on a simulation of what was basically the F-16 FDR, one of our first fly by wire jets. I am sure that device cost half a trillion bucks.
Right now, high school students send smartphones up in balloons to the edges of the atmosphere to take photos and other measurements. The guy behind rathergood hooked up with Sandisk to literally launch SD card laden paper airplanes from a balloon as well. Cubesats are replacing their innards with smartphones as well. http://projectspaceplanes.com/post/1198015071/hello-from-project-space-planes
Race cars have telemetry.
GM cars have telemetry via ONSTAR that they sell, EVEN WHEN YOU “DISCONNECT” THE SERVICE.
Telemetry is so cheap, I can’t imagine any project not having telemetry.
Again, having little to do with the Reno tragedy, I would ask why the FAA is at least 10 years behind the times here. I think highly of the FAA, but I suspect they, like most organizations, have built up terrible bureaucracies.
The photo in this article is artificially compressed in the horizontal plane so it looks like it is at an angle (due to the shape of the plane) but if you click on it, it is lengthened to the proper L to H ratio. That doesn’t mean that the sun did not cause a mirror effect, it simply changes where the sun would have to be in relation to plane.
That photo disturbs me also in that it looks too good for a typical ‘live’ photo. The ‘mirror effect’ could be photo shopping of a photo of a plane of the same model. Unless there was a super-high-speed camera deployed at the show I don’t know how a photo that good could be taken. I’m aware that current cameras and photo enhancement software can render extraordinary images and I’m not saying the photo is bogus, but I’d like to know what camera took that photo and what software post-processed it, It looks ‘off’ to me.
I’d also like to know what kind of camera to look for if I take the better half’s advice and buy a new camera. That’s an amazing shot.
anon,
I did not know this before, but I read yesterday the FDR in the Galloping Ghost had telemetry just in case the onboard data storage is lost in a crash. Now the only question is how many data points were monitored.
OS my threadjack wasn’t about putting FDR into general aviation — though I would like to see FDR make a comeback, even a zombie FDR.
I was speculating on why FDRs for aircraft that require them don’t have SD card backup, and lots of them. It’s not really about weight. And in the case of fly by wire aircraft, it’s not because it’s even difficult.
Of all the technologies that should be trivially implementable in a fly by wire aircraft, it would be the addition of a couple of SD card writers.
I think it’s mainly about bureaucracy in this case.
At any rate, …
OS (and everyone) – great descriptions; really interesting.
I could argue with one detail. As a photographer I am very sensitive to light, reflections, etc. While I viewed as many images online as I could find in order to determine if I could have an opinion or hunch on the broken seat theory, I also looked at canopies. I compared as many P-51’s as I could find to as many Galloping Ghost images available. Although my dad loved that bird so much he spent every Army Air Corps lunchtime sitting in one, I am not that familiar. I do know light, though. I downloaded the missing pilot photo, opened it in Photoshop, and can clearly see right through the canopy to the other side…specifically, the inverted “U” shaped leading edge of the canopy.
Somewhere else I read that if the seat broke, it could take the landing gear lever along with it and cause the gear to try to deploy.
I wonder if there is any way for the pilot to be scrunched down below the bottom level of the canopy. I can’t really quite tell if the seat back is present or not.
With sadness, I’ll just await the NTSB report.
anon: I assume you are talking about flight data recorders. The Galloping Ghost did have a FDR. One of the things about FDR is not the memory, but installing and maintaining the sensors. General aviation is already expensive enough. Last time I had a tachometer fixed, for example, the cost was well into four figures. An alternator on some Cessna aircraft is made by Ford and can be purchased at your local NAPA store. But you have to have an AN number on it to legally install one in an airplane, which means that you can almost buy a used Ford for what a aircraft certified alternator costs.
FDR on general aviation airplanes would likely put the industry, which is already on life support, out of business.
I think we are missing the most obvious solution which is that the pilot experienced a personal case of the Rapture…
…although I have to admit to preferring OS’s rationale.
anon, your question was the same as mine. I wonder if he either grabbed or accidentally hit the gear lever and the tail wheel came out. I doubt it would deploy under a high G loading, but anything mechanical can fail given enough stress.
The Moar You Know,
If the seat failed, it probably would have failed down and back. You may recall the original had a huge internal gas tank, which was why the P-51 could get all the way to Berlin and back. When that tank is removed, some of the extant P-51s were modified to have a back seat. In the case of a race plane, no back seat is installed, but there is that cavernous fuselage back there. My guess is that he may have ended up going backwards and out of sight–if indeed the seat failed. Even under normal conditions his head sticks up just enough into the reduced size canopy to see. If he were crushed down into the seat by massive G-forces, it is unlikely we could see his helmet that way either.
OS:
If this commentary is the product of your distracted mind you can fly me anytime. And blindfolded,even!