T-bird's Crash Report

[SitFlyer]

http://www.avweb.com/newswire/10_05a/briefs/186582-1.html

http://www.mountainhomenews.com/story/1060818.html

He ejected when the aircraft was 140 feet above the ground

Full Size Pic

[Brian Ellis]

Ouch!

[Jammrock]

Quick thinking on the pilots part to get the plane away from the crowd.

Jammrock

[Chrono_Wanderer]

LOL at first sight i was it was a EF2000 for some reason :?

[az]

This reminds me: In 1966, Russian pilots Kapustin and Jarow had problems with their plane, and they could have climbed and ejected, resulting in the plane crashing into a west Berlin residential area, but instead they chose to save the lives of their cold war enemies and forfeited their own lives by crashing the plane into the Stößensee.

AZ

[Ribbit]

Get the video from the avweb link and look at how fast the ground is coming up just before he ejects - it's scary.

Chrono - don't blame you, they do look similar from the front.

The reports have been saying the plane cost $20m. I thought half the point of the F-16 was that it was cheap, something like $5m. What does a really expensive plane like an F-15 or F-22 cost then? I thought an F-15 was around $15m.

[Jon P. Inghram]

Watch the pilot's left arm in the video, you can see the point where he realizes he's going in when he begins to move his hand bewteen the throttle and the ejection handle. In the still picture it's clear he opened the engine up to full burner to try to get enough airspeed to recover, but it was too late.

[KvHagedorn]

I think the F16 was $8 million when it came out many years ago.. inflation, you know.

What a waste of a great plane.. bet this guy loses his Thunderbird wings.

[KvHagedorn]

"The requirement for demonstration pilots to real time convert MSL to AGL numbers, a maneuver with a limited margin of error, and a preconscious level of awareness created a situation more susceptible to pilot error."

It would make sense to have an instrument pack that could be set to 3000ft=0ft in this case. Therefore having his altimeter read the feet above ground level automatically, rather than the feet above sea level.

[Brian R.]

Here's another video:

http://www.thecia.net/users/stewarte/tbirdeject2.wmv