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They crashed a plane! Which means they had completely lost control! What was stopping the plane from randomly pitching up and flying off towards people?

This seems to prove the opposite, that it was a dangerous stunt that the faa were right to deny and very luckily nobody was hurt

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I am going to assume you made the comment from position of ignorance on how they executed the stunt. They used a very very large airbrake to slow the aircraft down after pitching down into a near vertical dive and letting prop windmill. The risk of the plane flying away was negligible.

In fact a lot of engineering went into that airbrake!

Whatever we think of the stunt and its aftermath, Red Bull did make a very interesting page and video about the engineering and testing that went into it:

https://www.redbull.com/us-en/the-science-behind-plane-swap

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31361392

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