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Comment by tansey | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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)

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.

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