11/12/2022 - Texas Raiders and P-63 King Cobra collide

[CAPFlyer]

@Lynn Allen I don't recall seeing the Blues on the ramp at Redbird on Saturday. It was a WW2 show only. There was a Growler there on static however.

My bad, I saw a video used that showed them in the background. Sorry...

The video may have been from Wings Over Houston. The Angels were here for it a few weeks ago and was the last performance prior to Wings Over Dallas for TR and the P-63.

[Lynn Allen]

@Lynn Allen I don't recall seeing the Blues on the ramp at Redbird on Saturday. It was a WW2 show only. There was a Growler there on static however.

My bad, I saw a video used that showed them in the background. Sorry...

The video may have been from Wings Over Houston. The Angels were here for it a few weeks ago and was the last performance prior to Wings Over Dallas for TR and the P-63.

That's what I'm thinking as well...

[phil65]

National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) preliminary report

https://data.ntsb.gov/carol-repgen/api/ ... 106276/pdf.

Phil

[old iron]

what does "no altitude deconflictions" mean?

[CAPFlyer]

what does "no altitude deconflictions" mean?

It means there was no briefing for one group to be above or below the other to prevent collisions. With the fighters on the "near" show line, their paths would cross the "far" path of the bombers every time around since they were supposed to fly a shorter total path. That meant the only thing keeping the two formations from having any sort of conflict was time.

I'm going to cut off my comments there. I imagine just about anyone who's had any experience with airshow planning, line operations, or dealing with situations where you have multiple aircraft in the same area (i.e. SAR) will know where the focus is from here and what I think the only real conclusion is. I hate that it's taking this route, but it reinforces my prior statement that there's going to be a lot of fallout from this and little of it will be "learning moments". It's just bad....very bad. We lost some great guys from this and it's gonna hurt for a long time.

[JimH]

I’m amazed that with all the experience in that room nobody raised their hand. The biggest red flag you can have was raised. I agree with CAP, and this will be interesting to watch unfold.

Jim

[Zac Yates]

Thank you for the link, Phil, I didn't expect something so quickly. Here's a Washington Post story (for those interested:

Report: No altitude advice before Dallas air show crash
By Jamie Stengle and Jake Bleiberg | AP
November 30, 2022 at 11:44 p.m. EST

DALLAS — Just before a midair collision that killed six at a Dallas air show, a group of historic fighter planes was told to fly ahead of a formation of bombers without any prior plan for coordinating altitude, according to a federal report released Wednesday. The report did not give a cause of the crash.

A P-63 Kingcobra fighter was banking left when it struck a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber behind the left wing during the Nov. 12 air show featuring World War II-era planes, the National Transportation Safety Board said in its preliminary findings. All six people aboard the planes — the pilot of the fighter and the bomber’s pilot, co-pilot and three crew members — died as both aircraft broke apart in flight, with the bomber catching fire and then exploding on impact.

There had been no coordination of altitudes in briefings before the flight or while the planes were in the air, the NTSB said. The report said that the Kingcobra was the third in a formation of three fighters and the B-17 was the lead of a five-ship bomber formation.

Eric Weiss, an NTSB spokesperson, said the agency is trying to determine the sequence of maneuvers that led to the crash. It is also examining whether such air shows normally have altitude deconfliction plans.

“Those are precisely the types of questions our investigators are asking,” Weiss said. “What was the process? What’s the correct process? And what happened?”

John Cox, a former airline captain with more than 50 years’ experience, was surprised that the NTSB found there wasn’t an altitude deconfliction brief before or during the flight. He said these take place in other air shows, but he’s not certain whether they’re standard for the Commemorative Air Force, which put on the Wings over Dallas show.

A person familiar with the show’s operations that day said the air crews were given general altitude direction in their morning pre-show briefing. However, there was not a discussion of specific altitudes for each pass the aircraft were going to perform, said the person, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and did so on condition of anonymity.

Typically fighters fly above bombers, and when a group is called to make a pass that could put planes at the same or nearly the same altitudes, they maintain a lateral separation from each other, the person said. In general, the person continued, it’s the responsibility of the air boss to set out a plan for maintaining either vertical or lateral separation.

Wings Over Dallas was the group’s last show of the season, the person said.

The NTSB said the fighter formation had been told by the air boss to proceed to a line that was 500 feet (152 meters) from where the audience was lined up at Dallas Executive Airport, while the bomber formation was told to fly 1,000 feet (304 meters) from the audience viewing area.

The NTSB said a navigation device on the bomber “contained position information relevant to the accident” but a device on the fighter didn’t record during the flight.

The Commemorative Air Force, which put on the show for Veterans Day, said Wednesday that they’re continuing to work with the NTSB and are grateful for that agency’s “diligence in looking into anything that could have been a factor to cause the accident.” The group said they can’t speculate on the crash’s cause.

The Commemorative Air Force previously identified the victims as: Terry Barker, Craig Hutain, Kevin “K5” Michels, Dan Ragan, Leonard “Len” Root and Curt Rowe.

All the men were volunteers who had gone through a strict process of logging hours and training flights and were vetted carefully, Hank Coates, CEO of Commemorative Air Force, said after the crash.

Cox said the planes were flown by experienced pilots and that it’s “virtually certain” the pilot of the smaller, more maneuverable fighter didn’t see the bomber. He said understanding how this happened will be a central challenge for investigators.

“What happened for two pilots of this skill level to end up in the same airspace at the same time?” said Cox, the founder of Safety Operating Systems, which helps smaller airlines and corporate flight services around the world with safety planning.

The air show collision came three years after the crash of a bomber in Connecticut that killed seven, and amid ongoing concern about the safety of shows involving older warplanes.

The B-17, a cornerstone of U.S. air power during World War II, is an immense four-engine bomber that was used in daylight raids against Germany. The Kingcobra, a U.S. fighter, was used mostly by Soviet forces during the war. Most B-17s were scrapped at the end of World War II and only a handful remain today, largely featured at museums and air shows, according to Boeing.

___

Associated Press writer Tara Copp in Washington contributed to this report.

[hurricane_yank]

I am really surprised there wasn't already some written rule regarding this exact situation from ever being brought up. I am also shocked that no one in the room didn't raise an eyebrow on it or interject. I would have thought that for any airshow of substance that would have just been a regulation.

[Randy Haskin]

I’m amazed that with all the experience in that room nobody raised their hand. The biggest red flag you can have was raised. I agree with CAP, and this will be interesting to watch unfold.

Jim

I agree, but I think we have to take these preliminary comments in context.

Just because an altitude deconfliction plan wasn't briefed, that doesn't mean there wasn't a deconfliction plan at all.

It sounds like the airboss intended to use the Cat I and Cat II showlines as geographic deconfliction tools. The prelim report doesn't really explain that portion very well, so I'm interested to know what words were actually used in the brief.

Geographic deconfliction can be a perfectly good plan without any additional altitude deconfliction, but as CAPflyer alluded to, that is difficult to make work if you're using the dogbone flightpaths vs racetracks.

As for the "nobody said anything", I've flown in several shows where the airboss didn't have a defined deconfliction plan for the warbird parade in his briefing. There was always an offline meeting between the warbird pilots after the briefing to hammer out a plan between ourselves.

So, not interrupting the airboss briefing isn't in and of itself indication there wasn't a plan or that the participants just passively accepted whatever the airboss said without further clarification.

But, it is sure looking like this particular plan was a poorly designed and poorly executed one.

Last edited by Randy Haskin on Thu Dec 01, 2022 10:06 am, edited 3 times in total.

[sandiego89]

what does "no altitude deconflictions" mean?

It means there was no briefing for one group to be above or below the other to prevent collisions. With the fighters on the "near" show line, their paths would cross the "far" path of the bombers every time around since they were supposed to fly a shorter total path. That meant the only thing keeping the two formations from having any sort of conflict was time.

I'm going to cut off my comments there......

Yikes, that is my thought also with only timing being the separation. The NTSB preliminary with "....He directed the fighter formation to transition to a trail
formation, fly in front of the bomber formation, and proceed near the 500 ft show line. The
bombers were directed to fly down the 1,000 ft show line." was the first I had heard that the fighter track was closer to the crowd than the bombers, setting them up for a crossing move each time. Seeing the the videos and flight tracker overlays I had assumed the fighters were supposed to stay to the left of the bomber trail (further from the crowd).

[CAPFlyer]

It sounds like the airboss intended to use the Cat I and Cat II showlines as geographic deconfliction tools. The prelim report doesn't really explain that portion very well, so I'm interested to know what words were actually used in the brief.

I agree that this was probably the idea, but he had the shorter track flying the same left-hand pattern and the *nearer* line, meaning that each time they would be crossing the Bomber line's flight path *TWICE*.

There is zero excuse.

Zero.

[old iron]

Did I read somewhere that the air boss was rather new at this job, with somewhat limited experience? Is that something we can discuss, or should this be off the table?

[Lynn Allen]

There is article on thedroneingcompany.com which mentioned that a drone around the P-63 may have been a causal factor in the crash. I can't open the link so maybe somebody on the board might have access to it. There is a picture shown.

[CAPFlyer]

I actually watched that video several times when it popped up in my news feed yesterday. While possible, the video is far too poor quality to see anything definitive. There are several other angles that show the same moment and I would've thought if there was a drone, you would have seen it there as well, and nothing can be seen.

But the NTSB's prelim with the video suggest that might be a very minor proximal issue if anything. There's much bigger contributors.

[Xrayist]

Don't know if this has been discussed, read through all the posts and didn't see it. I might have missed it. There is supposedly new video of what appears to be an object striking the P-63, and right before, or after, the P-63 does a rapid move. Not sure what is meant by that, I have not found the video. There is speculation that it may have been a drone. Just curious if anyone else has seen/heard this. If, and a big IF, it was a drone, that would change everything.