James Gosling witnesses and blogs Reno airshow crash. | Hacker News Reader

James Gosling witnesses and blogs Reno airshow crash.

nighthacks.com

164 pointsKrylez52 comments

I know this is the internet and everyone (including me) watches every video link to any event, but please seriously consider whether you really want to watch the links people are posting here.

Effectively what happens is the plane is being followed by the camera, then when it crashes the camera loses focus for 2s, then refocuses in on a dead body, pans around to a few dead bodies, and zooms out to show you a bunch of bodies and some wreckage. Like Gosling says in his post, there are no flames, no gore, not really even any smoke. What makes it so disturbing is that it's just lifeless bodies, instantly killed... just lifeless, no blood or explosions. I suppose that some of them may be unconscious, but just knowing that Gosling said most were dead or uninjured kind of makes me think otherwise.

That's is what affects me most about these things. When I see videos of people being murdered (beheadings, the hammer video) it's shocking but there's no connection because I at least never think "I could be murdered next! Someone wants to hurt me!" but with this it's people just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's scary how fragile human life is and this is a reminder even if you're the most wonderful purpose and there's no malicious intent involved you're still at risk.

FWIW, I'm pretty sure going to an air show/air race is a fairly risky decision in the grand scale of things.

I wouldn't think so. How many people have ever died at airshows compared to how many go to them?

It may look dangerous, but (except for very rare exceptions) it's just a fun day out.

There's a comment further down this thread that shows four air show related fatalities in the past month.

I would think that going somewhere where you know you will be in close proximity to aircraft performing advanced stunts is one of the riskier places most people decide to go, even if the actual fatality rate is pretty low.

So quite safe relative to the risk of driving to the airshow?

The other ones were deaths of participants rather than spectators though.

If there's very rarely any fatalities, or even injuries, amongst the millions of people who go to airshows every year (the attendance at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh is around 800,000 every year for example, and Paris Airshow is around 350,000 people, plus the hundreds if not thousands of airshows like this one in Reno), how is it particularly risky?

We can look at the Reno air races as an example. It's been going on for 49 years and prior to today there were 19 deaths, none involving spectators. I've been going to the races for a lot of years though we decided not to this year, the course isn't that close to the spectators and much of it happens over open desert.

Yes and we can also use common sense to know an 80 year old dude flying a highly modified racing plane right above spectators is spectacularly stupid.

That may be true by itself but there are some eyewitness reports that actually conclude that the pilot acted in ways that greatly reduced the number of casualties. Don't be too quick to judge, it could have simply been a mechanical failure. At speeds and altitudes like that it does not take much.

That was my first thought. I believe he was only 74 though. Probably approaching the realm of spectacularly stupid. They said his medical records were all checked out, but I bet there's a higher level of scrutiny for older pilots going forward.

Here's some information about the medical class he passed in March of this year: http://flightphysical.com/part67/Class2/67subc.htm

You could also look at his FAA records and see that his being 74 likely had nothing to do with it:

http://www.av8rdan.com/2011/09/before-assuming-age-was-the-c...

edit: The course doesn't fly right over spectators, the plane went off course, possibly as part of what is suspected to be mechanical failure.

Airshows can be deadly to pilots, but up until this tragedy, safe for spectators: "John Cudahy, the president of the International Council of Air Shows, said Friday that no spectators have died at any air show in the country since 1952."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-air-sho...

There are airshows in other countries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramstein_airshow_disaster (might even count as US ground as it was a US military base).

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

1952? No way, I remember one where a jet hit the runway and a fireball engulfed the crowd that occurred probably in the late 1980s.

I think after that crash aircraft were banned from flying towards or over spectators the planes had to fly parallel or away from the crowd.

The last 2 years I went to Osh Kosh (2006 and 2008) there were two fatalities - one when a visiting pilot crashed on his way in (a lot of people fly in and camp at the air show) and another when two reno air race plans doing a race demo collided on the way in for landing. The sad part about the later crash is that it was a father and son who collided and the son was the one who died.

The president of the International Council of Air Shows made a PR-effective statement. However, looking into the history of airshows makes them look rather dangerous. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airshow_accidents)

Interesting to contrast Mr. Gosling's account to this one: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_AIR_SHOW_CRASH?SIT...

A lady ~90ft (or nearly twice the distance from the disaster as Mr. Gosling) from the accident said, "I saw body parts and gore like you wouldn't believe it. I'm talking an arm, a leg," Higgins said "The alive people were missing body parts. I am not kidding you. It was gore. Unbelievable gore."

I'm inclined to believe both of these are true, but I would not be surprised if one of these witnesses, in their understandable shock, had their minds fill in the blanks in their memories, wiped clean by stress. I've been through a firefight or two myself and IMO these life-and-death situations are a mix of crystal clarity and swiss cheese memory. Sometimes the brain puts things there that weren't.

I have seen the videos, and there were plenty of missing limbs. Don't watch if you're sensitive to that.

I'm not clicking anything even before your summary of the videos I could imagine what the result was and I have no need to see that.

It's not so much the dead bodies it's the fact it was a sudden tragic event if this was the evening news and they were showing a video of the results of war I think that should be allowed to shock the audience.

Here's the post, since his blog is getting hammered by Reddit right now:

I'm alive Friday September 16, 2011

Just fucking barely. I'm at the air races in Reno with a bunch of friends and a horrific accident just happened. One of the very high end racers, going about 500 mph, lost control and nose dived straight into the audience. The news is currently saying that the plane missed the grandstand, but that's only technically true: in front of the grandstand there are several rows of box seats. It impacted right in the middle of them. I was in a box seat with my friends only 50 feet from the impact. I was watching the plane as it lost control, so I saw the whole thing. The impact happened so fast, there was hardly any sound: just one huge shock wave. No fireball. The plane, and many people, disintegrated instantly, right in front of me. There were bodies everywhere. No crash you've ever seen in a movie is even remotely authentic.

Update: it's already on YouTube. I was in the middle of the dust cloud you see around the impact. They're saying "30 serious injuries" but I know that's a long way from the truth. At least that many died instantly in the impact. I suspect that there were not a huge number of serious injuries. It was not a small airplane. You either died or you didn't. I didn't. My brother and I are still shaking.

Another Update: They're now officially calling it a "mass casualty situation". The plane was Galloping Ghost, piloted by Jimmy Leeward. It was a very cool, highly modified, P51 mustang with a very unusual approach to engine cooling. I doubt that this was at all connected to the accident - it looked like a control system failure.

Coral cache: http://nighthacks.com.nyud.net/roller/jag/entry/i_m_alive

As a counterpoint to the various people arguing that we shouldn't see this, that you shouldn't watch the video, etc., I want to argue that the modern US aversion to contemplating death has become pathological. Death is the one unavoidable fact about life, the only thing you are guaranteed to do, and the sooner and more deeply a person understands that, the better. It's difficult, it's unpleasant, but it's necessary.

Ten of the traditional forty subjects of Buddhist meditation are the asubha, the "repulsive subjects", corpses in different states. Meditating on these is intended to help you come to terms with your own mortal nature, and to prevent you from coming to worship things of the body as if they deserved it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamma%E1%B9%AD%E1%B9%ADh%C4%81n...

In many Buddhist areas of the world, you can buy sets of cards with images of all forty, to be used as a meditation aid. (It's easier to hold your attention on a subject when you're looking at a picture of it.) Imagine the righteous indignation of the preserve-your-ignorance squad here if such a thing were to be displayed.

Here's the whole video (it happens about 39 minutes in.) Please note it's somewhat disturbing:

http://www.livestream.com/loadedtv/video?clipId=pla_b2efcd7d...

This is really tragic.

This is the fourth fatal air show accident/crash I've seen in less than a month:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/21/us-kansas-airshow-... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-14602900 http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/homepage_showcase/accident-at-selfri...

My wife and I had air race tickets for tomorrow and Sunday right in that general area. They were box seats. That (likely) malfunction in Galloping Ghost could have happened when we were there, so we're counting our blessings tonight. But we feel awful for those involved. As stupid as these races seem, everyone loves them here. Part of me hopes they can continue.

Auto racing used to be a lot more dangerous for spectators than it is today. We're only 30 years or so removed from a time when bails of hay and waist-high walls were all that separated crowds from the track. Go back a little bit further and you'd see things that would be laughably unsafe by today's standards like gigantic trees lining the sides of several race tracks.

I'm not even sure where you could begin improving safety for crowds at air racing events without forcing them to move much further back from the action. With cars you can move back 50 feet, put up a barrier, and improve your safety tremendously. For planes, you'd probably have to move the crowds way further back than they are now. I imagine being up close and in front of the action is part of the spectacle though.

One unorthodox approach could be restricting these events to landscapes where the crowds could be on an elevation above the planes. I watched the video and in the background are hills/mountains where crowds could safely be located above the planes.

The vast majority of the hills around the airport are further away than they look.

If something's going to go wrong in big uncontrollable way, it's most likely going to be in (or coming out of) a corner. These races should see fast turns being made way outside of the viewing area. Quite simply, an aircraft should never be in a situation where it is flying towards a crowd.

Indeed. I remember reading about how magnesium frames were all the rage in the 24 hours of Le Mans, until a car summersaulted into the audience. They had to just let it burn because they couldn't extinguish the fire.

Of course, nothing will take your breathe away like the unbelievable near-miss videos of rally racers missing spectators by inches on YouTube.

for those not wishing to see the videos (I'm in that group) here's two photos showing exactly what happened minus the gore

immediately prior: http://imgur.com/QuAnm

impact: http://imgur.com/CcS91

One amazing thing about the 2nd photo: The self-preservation instinct of the audience still hasn't kicked in. Spectators are craning their necks to see what's happening, and photography dude is just manning the camera.

You have to realize how fast it happened, I'm sure their brains have barely had time to process what happened let alone telling the rest of their body to get the hell out of there. 400-500mph is REALLY fast.

Here's a video from a different angle that really shows how fast it happened.

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/09/17/nevada.plane.crash/

Here is a clear version of the youtube video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybgd0EfxWCI

I'm never watching any videos of this nature. Life is too precious to glorify losing. I'm weep for all those involved in this tragedy.

This is disaster porn. You can't learn from it. It is just to see what it looks like when an airshow goes horribly wrong.

Well... unless you consider gratitude and empathy worth learning.

The youtube video linked on his story has been removed by Youtube for "content violations". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCNePeKn3Tg&feature=playe...

Here's a currently-working video; I'm not sure if it's the same one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYaEh9h5aM0 .

There's a Wikipedia article about the crash, with a bunch of news links: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/2011_Reno_Air...

Another angle, showing the plane climbing high into the sky before turning over and diving: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndd9PVDM3jU

Assorted photos of the crash and aftermath (no gore, but beware): http://www.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=J7&Dato=20...

To give the uninitiated an idea of what happened, whenever a plane at the Reno races experiences a mechanical problem, the pilot points the aircraft vertical and bleeds off all their forward speed. Once they're high enough, they level off and glide to the runway for a landing.

For the 'Unlimited' class of race aircraft, this typically occurs once a day during the races. These aircraft are running 3000hp engines, and race at speeds around 500mph.

Link #3 has the best angle on this maneuver. It looks like the pilot lost control shortly after pulling the plane vertical, after which it rolled 180 degrees and pitched straight to the ground.

Watching link #3, it look like an accelerated maneuver stall: the left wing appears to drop (which I think would be normal stall/spin behavior for clockwise rotating prop) after the abrupt pull up, the aircraft rolls inverted, and there isn't sufficient altitude to recover.

Here's a pic of the plane right before the crash: http://cessnateur.blogspot.com/2011/09/reno-crash-trim-tab-t...

The left elevator trim panel looks gone. By itself I wouldn't think that would cause loss of control, but could have precipitated events in a chain often seen in air accidents.

It is probably fully deflected. If it were deflected inadvertently, it would be very difficult to recover control of airplane pitch at the speeds and low altitudes where this occurred.

Another possibility is that the elevator control itself was lost and the pilot is desperately attempting to regain control using the trim tab to control airplane pitch.

There's a new picture of the plane (though I can't find it not embedded in video) showing the tab detaching. In the best picture I've seen the tab is perpendicular to the tail and then in the next frame is completely gone.

pretty bad, but could have been a lot worse.

i.e. like the Sknyliv disaster(really recommend not watching the video of that one)

An article about the plane and the pilot:

http://www.thestarpress.com/article/20110917/NEWS01/10917033...

Terrible tragedy.

http://www.rgj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=J7&Dato=20...

Photo 7 is very peculiar. The pilot is not visible. I am familiar with this cockpit, and there is no where to go backwards, so he must be all the way forwards out of view.

In photo 38, you can see how visible he is when taxiing out.

Just absolutely terrible. My thoughts are with all involved.

Photo 7 is very strange. Would the seat harness have allowed his body to move this far forward? This probably also would have pushed the stick forward which isn't consitent with the way the airplane maneuvered, AFAIK. Any ideas?

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