James Gosling Report of Reno Air Crash

Earlier today, a tragic crash at the Reno National Championship Air Races killed at least 12 spectators, and left at least 75 injured. Reader xmas2003 writes with a link to Java creator James Gosling's first-hand account of the crash, which he describes as "better than most of what is being reported in mainstream media so far."

i was there

[Anonymous Coward]

i saw it first hand, the galloping ghost lost control and did a barrel roll over the stands and crashed 50 feet away from me into the edge of the box seats. it looked like its aileron got stuck and he couldn't correct it. i love the air races like no other and iv been involved with it literately my whole life, but i will never forget what i saw.

Video

[kid_wonder]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qs98xkTIBQU [youtube.com]
about the 3:30 mark

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zusClmg4IQg [youtube.com]
about the :30 second mark

Horrible looking, but amazingly not an explosion.

Re:Trajectory

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hard to tell. When there's a problem where the pilot feels he needs to bow out, it's usual for them to declare mayday and climb up and around to land while the race continues. I was there, and when I first saw the plane climb I thought it was just another routine failure, but when he flipped over I could see it wobbling a bit, and it seemed like a control surface may have malfunctioned and stuck in a position outside its normal range of motion while the pilot fought for control. Also don't forget that it was windy all day. (I don't remember which way it was blowing)

As for claims of him having a heart attack or some other medical problem... It MAY be possible, but I don't think so. I personally think a person in his position would know better than to fly if he was in bad shape, not to mention the physicals they go through regularly.

Re:Video

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.livestream.com/loadedtv/video?clipId=pla_b2efcd7d-ed04-4edf-89e8-f21ff436ccb4
accident is around 38mins in but be warned its very graphic/gorey :(

Re:80 year old pilot

[narkosys]

not sure how it works in the US but here in Canada pilots have to take a medical once a year, twice a year if over the age of 40. They also add more tests, such as hearing tests and ECGs on a more regular basis as you get older.

P

Mass casualty incident

[pfish]

It's not uncommon to have a vehicle accident with 5 patients and also declare that an MCI. That just means the first responders were overwhelmed by the amount of patients and injuries and they need to declare an MCI, which prompts a number of things: additional emergency personnel, overhead to manage the incident, notifies local hospitals so they can start taking action prior to patient arrival, etc.

Re:Trajectory

[statusbar]

Here are some interesting photos which may show that there was mechanical failure: Elevator trim tab missing [blogspot.com]

Another scary series of photos: Impact [rgj.com]

--jeffk++

It had nothing to do with the pilot's age...

[KingRobot]

He was 74, not 80, and he held a current 2nd class medical certification from the FAA. Most private pilots only have a 3rd class; his health was fine and almost certainly had nothing to do with it. You can read more about his credentials here: http://www.av8rdan.com/2011/09/before-assuming-age-was-the-cause-of.html [av8rdan.com] Also, photos are circulating that show control surfaces missing from the aircraft before the crash. Something went wrong mechanically - please do your research before making mindless assumptions. http://corduroyplanet.blogspot.com/2011/09/chilled.html [blogspot.com]

Re:Video

[statusbar]

Also relevant photos showing the airplane was damaged before impact: missing elevator [blogspot.com]

Another photo series: impact [rgj.com]

--jeffk++

Re:Correct, you do not understand

[assemblerex]

Part of the tail came off, and he lost control. It was headed directly for the stands, and the pilot knew he was going to die.
His last act was to exert as much pressure on the stick as possible and avoid the stands. He succeeded and hit the boxes in front of the stands
We're talking hundreds dead versus dozens

Knowledable answer

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been attending the Reno Races for over 20 years, know many of the Unlimited pilots. I've illegally flown backseat several times in Unlimited class races. I knew Jimmy. He was probably the most liked and experienced pilot there. I wasn't there this time, but I understand he had turned outer #8 pylon (a 50 ft high pole with a barrel on the top) and was headd toward the pit area preparing to turn again and go down the straight in front of the stands. The FAA mandates no aircraft can fly closer than 1500 ft from people. A pilot can lose his license, and some have, for violating that hard rule. I think Jimmy had a medical or mechancial problem and tried to gain altitude to bail out or glide to a landing. He must have not had power in the 3000hp engine, or had pulled the throttle back - preparing to bail out. The plane ran wide over the crowd and he probably tried to fly it to a safe place to crash. Jimmy would do that, sacrifice himself for others. In the short video, the plane isn't completely vertical, but about ten degrees from vertical. That's imporant since it indicates loss of control. The P-51 is falling rather than diving nose completely first. One wing is full of high octane fuel, the other full of water alcohol. Yet there was no fire. That's weird. My guess is that many more spectators won't make it. A Mustang is two or three car lengths long and very heavy. The impact area had to be huge with lots of shrapnel. What a sad day. A good man gone.

Re:What happened to the setback and trajectory reg

[BlueStrat]

US Airshows

Wrong.

This was an Air Race not an Air Show.

Was the race allowed to weasel out of those regs by not calling itself an airshow, even though that's exactly what it is?

The Reno Air Races operate under far stricter regulations than air shows. Unfortunately, sometimes aircraft fail in unpredictable ways. Nothing is completely safe.

"Second, air show performers Ã" both civilian and military Ã" are prohibited from performing maneuvers that direct the energy of their aircraft toward the area in which the spectators are sitting."

So much for that rule.

These aircraft travel at well over 400MPH. They can travel a long way in a very short time. There's also no way to determine which direction an aircraft might travel in the case of mechanical/control failure or pilot incapacitation.

It appears from the video that the pilot experienced a control failure. In that case, there's not much anyone including the pilot could do to avoid tragedy. The pilot appears to have lost all control of the aircraft, likely due to the aforementioned control system failure.

In this kind of scenario with no way to control the aircraft, the only way to be totally safe is to be outside of the distance the fuel onboard could carry the aircraft. This could be up to 100 miles or more in any direction, even with the limited fuel load of a race aircraft and depending on the point in the flight where directional control is lost.

The poor guy probably sacrificed his own life by staying with the aircraft and not bailing out/ejecting in a last-ditch attempt to try to avoid hitting the stands.

I hope the FAA employees, airshow promoters, and airport employees who approved the airshow plan are all charged criminally.

You may want to re-think your rant. The world cannot be made toddler-safe, and nobody would like living in it, even if it were possible. There is always an element of risk to practically any activity, even laying in bed at night under your covers.

Strat

Re:80 year old pilot

[DNS-and-BIND]

First, he was 74, not 80. I don't know where you get that bullshit. Second, the crash was due to mechanical failure. See photo here. [fbcdn.net] Third, you think maybe because the guy is living life, racing fighter planes, is why he's above ground at the age of 74 when many of his peers are six feet under or pissing themselves at nursing homes? He passed the physical exams with flying colors, which include reflexes and eyesight. I'm sure he would be the first to disqualify himself if he felt even the least bit unworthy to fly.

Yes, you're the only one who thinks it's strange. Asshole.

Re:What happened to the setback and trajectory reg

[fbjon]

The plane banked to the right very suddenly, but with a kind of jerking motion, and continued until it was inverted. This put it in a position to go over the stands. However, a second later it went into a steep inverted nosedive towards the stands, and then going all the way into a half loop so that the plane was (barely) right side up again when it hit the ground right at the front of the crowd, probably because the pilot was pulling up to avoid the crowd. If the pilot had managed a fraction of a second more flight time, there would probably have been few casualties, since the crash was literally within meters of the crowd front, and people just meters to the sides escaped seemingly unharmed (at least according to some videos).

IANADoctor but I can't think of a medical emergency that causes that sort of erratic manoeuvring, passing out certainly doesn't. Moreover, the plane was already in trouble, since the pilot called in a mayday and started to pull up according to protocol when the fatal problems happened. Mechanical failure is simply more likely at this point: video showing the sequence of events [youtube.com]

Re:mechanical failure

[fbjon]

It's a small elevator on the large elevator. The elevator control surface is the horizontal tail which controls pitch (up-down), and the trim tab is a strip of separately controllable surface on the tail edge of the elevator (or other control surface), which gives the pilot the ability to semi-permanently give the plane an up/down bias (or left/right roll or rudder bias). Since it's part of the surface, if the trim tab disappears, the surface won't work as designed any more, and might be more unstable. In particular, only the left-hand side tab seems to have gone, which might mean that the trim setting would be unbalanced, possibly giving the left elevator more lift than the right, and so possibly causing the plane to roll right (among other things).

Re:Trajectory

[Anonymous Coward]

As other comments point out, he had lost one elevator trim tab. With the airplane going at high speeds, the pilot will trim the elevators nose-down to counteract the lift. When a trim tab falls off, it causes a sudden pitch up which at high speeds causes many Gs of acceleration (say, 10G), which can cause loss of consciousness in the pilot. It all sounds plausible to me and could explain why he wasn't sitting upright in the cockpit.

Re:Altitude is your friend

[arikol]

Pictures show the elevator trim tab broken off. At those speeds the aircraft needs significant nose down force to stay level, and if the trim tab breaks off then the aircraft will nose up violently (and violently at 4-500 mph is a violent action indeed). It is quite possible that he suddenly hit between 5-9 Gs (my bet is in the higher part of the range) while unprepared. The human body can't do anything in those conditions. Quite different if those forces are expected and you can prepare through breathing and muscle contraction, but he probably got smacked down and possibly slammed his head into the instrument panel (as this was on the straight which is a place for going through and changing settings, the easy and fun part of the race).
Broken trim tab:
http://external.ak.fbcdn.net/safe_image.php?d=AQD53IBQjMbO0oqC&w=90&h=90&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.graytvinc.com%2Fimages%2Fplane%2Benlarged.jpg [fbcdn.net]
No pilot showing in canopy during dive:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/09/16/us/20110917_RENO-IPAD-4.html [nytimes.com]

Re:What happened to the setback and trajectory reg

[arikol]

Evidence (photgraphs) suggest that the elevator trim tab broke off. Due to the speed making a nose up moment the plane was fairly probably trimmed pitch down. Elevator tab breaks off = plane pitches violently up, hurting or killing the pilot (imagine an instant, unexpected 9 Gs when you are setting the turboboost setting. BAM face in instrument panel!). The plane then careens up, past vertical, and down again, with the pilot probably incapacitated. The plane is at around 450mph when this occurs. It can travel quite far in a few seconds, and in this case that was,sadly, towards the spectators. Sad, but shit does happen. This is a racing incident, and has always been one of the risks of racing.

My heart goes out to all those who are injured or have lost a loved one.

Normal human reaction

[SmallFurryCreature]

It takes one. Just one.

There has been a lot of research into this field and the basic conclusion is that there are only a few "real" people in the world, the rest are filler.

Simple setup, at a busy public location an actor fakes an incident, say collapsing on the pavement. The results are filmed. What shows? Nobody does anything UNTIL one person does something, then others rush to assist as well following that ones persons example.

It is wrong to think this is malice. There are leaders in our society and there are followers and the followers need someone to give them an example of what to do. How should I react?

Babies already have this, experiment: place a thick glass plate between two solid objects, making a bridge. Place child on one of the objects and encourage it to crawl over the glass bridge (height) to the other. Baby will be happy to do so, or drool, or poop (whipe, change and repeat). If it notices the drop below it, watch its reaction. It won't have one UNTIL it sees its mother. Mother looks happy? Baby happy. Mother looks scared? Baby is scared. Suddenly the height is something it must apparently fear, and it will.

What do you do when an incident happens? I actually know some emergency training because it was forced on me when I did my national service. A few years ago I had a chance to use it... no, that isn't right, a few years ago buried training emerged and took over. I didn't know what to do but my training did. It was on automatic. Had I had to give instructions to someone else to do the same as I was doing, I wouldn't have been able to. If you asked me afterwards what I did, I couldn't really tell you, CPR but not the actions itself.

People are cattle, performing well rehearsed tricks, my trick just happened to include CPR.

If one person shows the right example, the rest will follow and humanity can show itself at its best. If one person shows the wrong example... well... read up on history, things can get very dark indeed.

Oh as for an aid giver being sued? I did crack some ribs of my "patient" an elderly woman who suffered an heart attack right in front of her house, she died a few days later. Her son came to me and thanked me because although cracked ribs hurt like hell and she still died, she died amongst family in a warm bed, not on the street alone. Only in America would a person think of sueing for giving aid. One person showing the wrong example and the rest followed.

We make our own society far more then we think but it is always up to a single individual to lead the way. One must go first.

Just pray you are the one when the call comes unexpected. For 20 years my training went to waste and then I needed it in an instant... those that falter are not evil, they are human. The ones who exploit it, like those who sue or steal from victims, they are the ones to hate.

So don't blame the persons standing around that accident, blame the guy who wanted to sue you for creating the atmosphere of being afraid to help in the first place.

Re:Correct, you do not understand

[drnb]

and the pilot knew he was going to die.

He could have ejected to save his own life, but he elected to die.

WW2 aircraft do not have ejection seats. Pilots have to unstrap, climb out and exit in a manner to minimize the chance of getting hit by the tail.

Re:i was there

[Savantissimo]

A comment on the Gosling blog has a link [blogspot.com] to a very clear picture from less than a second before the crash showing the left elevator trim tab missing, also possible smoke from under the rear fuselage in the vicinity of the tail wheel. There do not appear to be any major control inputs to my inexperienced eye other than a slightly depressed right aileron and possible up elevator, though the latter is hard to see. The view shows only the top of the plane and no background to show the plane's orientation. The pilot is hunched forward with his helmet at the front of the cockpit.

Another shot, less than a plane length before impact, shows the tail wheel deployed and the pilot's head is not visible in the cockpit, though the picture would show it if it were above the edge of the cockpit.

That tail wheel is normally retracted in race trim. Odds are control flutter from the unbalanced elevator combined with the high-G pull-up maneuver shook it open.

Eyewitness reports say Jimmy [Leeward] did everything he could to keep that plane out of the crowd. He was probably pulling on that stick with everything he had.

Curiously, the rear portion of the left elevator is not clear, although the shot is fast enough to freeze the propeller and the angle is a perfect left-side profile. The elevator may have been fluttering at an extreme rate, blurring the view, or it may just be a consequence of the low contrast of the elevator against the fuselage with identical paint. At the time of the crash the plane is right-side up, flying above the crowd from the back towards the front of the crowd, as if trying to pull out of a loop and it impacts at about a 45 degree angle.

Another video [youtube.com] from the parking lot shows that the plane lost vertical control about 12 seconds before impact and first nosed up several hundred feet in 7 seconds before turning from vertical up to vertical down in less than three seconds, apparently at near full speed the whole way. The crash happened less than three seconds after the plane nosed down.

Also see: the gallery for the AP story "3 dead, 56 injured in horrific US air show crash" [google.com] for high-resolution versions.