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- Hacker News
- Four people ejected.
What is the purpose of the second person in such plane, at the air show?
by tintor - Flight time for the electronic warfare officer?by justinator
- > What is the purpose of the second person in such plane, at the air show?
Pilot Flying, Pilot Monitoring (and dealing with radio and coordination).
It's hard to see single-pilot operations outside of General Aviation aka people flying for fun or for dusting crops - and enough incidents happen in GA, especially in cropdusting, that it might make sense to mandate two-pilot operations there, but good luck trying to get that passed, people are already complaining as it is that aviation is too expensive and in fact are moving towards getting commercial aviation to single-pilot operations.
by mschuster91 - They're 2-crew airplanes. If you're used to flying with a backseater, it's probably safer to continue doing that.by rogerrogerr
- Former USAF aviator Juan Browne, a leading voice of aviation sanity posted a video on this, and he is pissed off.by consumer451
- What an odd collision. The way they remain in tandem after contact is uncanny, almost as though they were not under direct control.by gausswho
- They probably went into a stall (loss of lift) after collision. So they would have lost all control.
Their controls would probably feel all mushy and unresponsive at that point.
- That maneuver they were attempting looks WILD. Would have been amazing to have pulled of. Or, perhaps to have regularly pulled off until today. I'm guessing that must be some sort of vectored thrust trickery.by arwhatever
- https://x.com/Brick_Suit/status/2056183711549608239
It doesn't look like a fancy manoeuvrer, just slow repositioning and they drifted into each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6QlJrUX1Ags is probably a better link to the clip.
by Steve44 - They weren’t attempting anything, just repositioning for the next pass. They were flying away from the audience. They lost track of each other.by rogerrogerr
- I don't think anything after the second jet's merge was deliberate. NASA's HARV is the only F/A-18 with a thrust vectoring exhaust designed for it, and it's doubtful that similar kit would go on an EW jet.
What's shown in the video appears to be some form of slipstreaming by the chase craft that causes them both to lose pitch authority, pulling up into a stall state and then a yaw tailslide.
by bigyabai - Is there much of a way to recover from that kind of glomping? Kinda seems like the aerodynamics might hold them together (as the noses are somewhat pointed together), or with enough speed rip them apart chaotically since they're a bit skewed (which could be worse than ejecting early).
It seems pretty obvious that ejecting is the right choice either way, but it makes me wonder if there's any alternative in this kind of scenario.
by Groxx - Depending on how much damage was incurred during contact, since they were already flying predominantly the same direction & speed, at a higher altitude they might have uncoupled and regained controlled flight. Examples of more grievously damaged airplanes have landed in the past. I don't think they had any real hope if they stayed joined, tho.by rootusrootus
- Basically all modern fighters since the 1980s are aerodynamically unstable and require a computer to fly. A collision like this is almost certainly going to do major damage to the airframe (screwing up its aerodynamics) and maybe flight controls as well. I suspect the plane will be well outside the parameters that the flight controls software can deal with, making stable flight impossible.by Merad
- That's good that all pilots ejected safely. But what if it fails? Still, losing two specialized aircraft during an airshow feels like very expensive, I doubt if it's really worth it to risks these pilots life on itby Riany
- The US has over 10,000 military aircraft in service and thousands of spares sitting in storage. The US is quite arguably the only military that can casually absorb losses like these.
This specific aircraft is being phased out over the next several years. Assuming these still had some miles left on the airframe, they likely would have been put in cold storage a few years from now.
- Since the negative PR effects of exploding planes undermine the intended positive promotional aspects of conducting air shows, we should probably just halt and save money, right?
- My god that tv website is chockful of javascript from all over.
If you wish to avoid it: https://nitter.net/search?f=tweets&q=mountain+home+air
by yubblegum - What are Growlers doing performing aerobatic maneuvers at air shows? They have tens of millions in specialized extra equipment on board. Seems like a poor use of taxpayer money. Send regular F-18s, not the rare expensive ones that look the same.by ak217
- US military airshows make a point to use combat ready aircraft. F-22s flew over SF during fleet week.by __loam
- Yeah it's lame but it's a rounding error compared to the amount wasted on foreign military adventures.by colordrops
- Air shows always carry the risk of killing pilots, like any training or combat mission. So we should not have air shows at all because losing a $30M or a $60M jet is secondary to losing highly trained pilots we need for combat readiness.by tedggh
- How much do tax payers pay for an F-18?by kleiba2
- When you have exorbitant privilege you tend to use it.by david_shi
- the pilots need to fly <N> hours to keep their pilot rating anyways.
So aside from the slightly elevated risk to the civilian observers, and the occasional risk due to maneuvers (I think they doing something particularly showy in this case?), the extra cost to the taxpayer do this is ~nil.
by dnautics - You cannot simply tell an EA-18G crew to hop into a "regular F-18" for the weekend. The pilots involved belong to a specific Electronic Attack Squadron (in this case, VAQ-129 based out of NAS Whidbey Island). Military pilots belong to specific units, maintain specific platform qualifications (NATOPS), and fly the aircraft assigned to their squadron. If a VAQ squadron is invited to perform or do a flyover, they bring their Growlers.The EA-18G is neither rare nor drastically more expensive than a standard Super Hornet in its base configuration.
The maneuvers performed by these types of aircraft at air shows (such as a "rejoin" or close-formation flying) are not circus stunts; they are standard tactical maneuvers that pilots practice daily. More importantly, military pilots are required to fly a certain number of hours each month to maintain their proficiency and flight status. Flying to, from, and during an air show counts toward these mandatory, already-budgeted flight hours.
by altmanaltman - Much of that specialized equipment is mounted on the hard points where you would otherwise attach ordnance. It is easily removable. In the videos I don’t see much evidence of that equipment being installed. This is consistent with what you would do for an airshow.
The US military plans to lose about 25 airframes per year due to various mishaps. They operate well over 10,000 airframes and produce far more new airframes each year than they lose. The optimal loss rate is not zero.
- It's crazy to me that Americans feel like they can't afford socialized healthcare, but performing tricks in $70M jets is something that must proceed at all costs.by peteforde
- Yes because over in the rest of the world (or "the country of Europe" to be exact), we all have "socialized healthcare" where we pillage the wealthy and just spend shitloads of tax money on it. That would go very great, and is not a flawed idea whatsoever. /sby uyzstvqs
- Come now, do you really think those are the same people?