Quote:
Originally Posted by Torplexed
Would a plane of this vintage have had a ejection seat? Seems like it would, but maybe the aircraft was demilitarized for civilian airshow use.
Of course, I suppose that would look even worse in retrospect if the pilot bails in a vertical direction and parachutes to safety while his errant plane belly-flops in a major motorway.  |
The original had a Mk2 Martin Baker, that may have been upgraded since then, but yes they do have ejection seats, not sure if it's a zero/zero though.
Honestly though I think the pilot was trying to bring the nose up to the last second but the sink rate was just too high.
Really there's two things that I expect the AAIB will be looking at, control failure or pilot error. Either the pilot misjudged his available altitude when he commenced his loop, sadly that is easily done, or the aircraft elevators did not work correctly to make the loop tighter. You can see in the video that there was possibly a stall while he was attempting to pull up out of the dive, so it looks like he had full control, just not enough height.
Must have been a terrible few seconds for him, realising that the aircraft wasn't going to climb up out of the dive, and realising where his flightpath was.
Terribly tragic for all involved.