Oh Shit! Airshow Disaster in Ukraine - 78 people dead!

[KillaLadY]

This is the story

[vench]

I just saw this on CP24! With no sound but I saw the pictures.


vench

[junglisthead]

goddam cowards who call themselves pilots

a pilots main course of duty is to steer a plane away from civilians, and that means risking your own life if having to do so

they should stand trial for the murder of those innocents


this occurance proves without a doubt that any airshows should follow toronto's example and have the airshow planes fly over a large body of water instead of land

[gasper]

^^^ wtf are you talking about????

The plane bounced off the ground before the pilots even ejected!

[the_fornicator]

Originally posted by gasper
^^^ wtf are you talking about????

The plane bounced off the ground before the pilots even ejected!

ummm:

"The pilots ejected just before the impact and at least one parachute was seen to flare open as fierce flames and plumes of black smoke erupted from the wreckage. "

[gasper]

in the video i saw, it looked like the plane was in a cartwheel when the seats ejected.... a fraction of a second wait would have killed them. i don't think that they can be labeled as cowards for this.

[MalGlo]

actually what he says is somewhat true...

part of their responsibility is to do best effort to steer the plane away from civilians to prevent civilian casualties... before ejecting.

ie. say that he had stayed in the plane a few more seconds.. maybe.. just maybe... the plane could have steered away to miss the crowd..

or to only hit 20 people instead of 78.....

the odds of them surviving a low-altitude ejection anyways are slim....

its a tough choice but a choice you make when u accept the job, i believe.

dave

[TILT_Lance]

from whut it looks like there was nothing they could do.....it looked like they ejected at the last minute possible for them......i don't thing they were trying to save themselves.....i think they did all that was possible and ejected.....

[KillaLadY]

Well, I think they will be over interrogated once they get better.

[TILT_Lance]

Originally posted by KillaLadY
Well, I think they will be over interrogated once they get better.

which is the painful truth......do you think for real these guys were like save ourselve worry about others later?.....they are in the airforce....their job is to protect others (in theory).....i honestly think its beating a dead horse

[Lurker]

the Russians have, and have had the best ejection seats for years. They are 0-0 seats, meaning they work from 0 altitude and 0 miles per hour.

If the pilots punched out when they did, it will have been at the last possible second. There is footage from Farnborough in the early 90's when a MiG-29 pilot lost an engine and pointed the plane at the infield, only to eject metres from the ground and survived, 0 civilian casualties.

The Russian pilots are some of the best in the world, and this was on their home turf. I highly doubt that they would not have done eveything possible to avoid any civilian harm.

They are some of the most proud, professional people going...having met a few of them myself.

This was a tragedy, but I think that the problem may lie with the fact that they were flying towards the crowd, something not allowed at North American airshows for this exact reason (stems from that Italian crash referenced in the article). Theory being, if something goes wrong, it won't be coming towards the people on the ground



Paul

[Rosey]

the reports and footage actually show that they pilots didn't eject until a wingtip had already brushed the ground. they stayed with that bird until there was absolutely nothing more that they could hope to do. not that they could have done anything with both engines dead and the plane spinning end over end. credit where credit is due.

[Skipper]

Originally posted by Rosey
the reports and footage actually show that they pilots didn't eject until a wingtip had already brushed the ground. they stayed with that bird until there was absolutely nothing more that they could hope to do. not that they could have done anything with both engines dead and the plane spinning end over end. credit where credit is due.

Although they may not have ejected until the last possible second, there is speculation that the entire incident was caused by pilot error.

[Rosey]

Death toll from air-show crash now 83





By MARK MacKINNON
Globe and Mail Update


Moscow — The bright sun lighting their grim faces, hundreds of family members and survivors gathered Monday for a memorial ceremony on the charred Ukrainian airstrip where a military jet plowed into air show spectators, killing at least 83.

As investigators sought to determine who was to blame, Ukraine's air force commander and a top officer had been detained, the Su-27's two pilots were under investigation and the country's defence minister had submitted his resignation. Two main causes were being considered — pilot carelessness or mechanical failure of the 15-year-old plane.

All of Ukraine, a France-sized former Soviet republic of 50 million people, held a day of mourning Monday for the victims of Saturday's crash, the world's deadliest air show accident.

The body count was still rising; five more people died in hospitals around Lviv Sunday, bringing the death toll to 83 from Saturday morning's disaster.

"There were fragments of people lying by the plane," said Roman Andreiko, a television executive who hid behind a truck with his family when the jet hit. "There were clouds of smoke. People were in shock."

The two Ukrainian air-force colonels flying the twin-engined plane ejected seconds before the explosion. One was seen being helped away by emergency crews, his silk parachute wrapped around a pole. Both airmen are receiving hospital treatment.

Officials at the mayor's office in the western city of Lviv said a total of 83 people had been killed, including 23 children, and 199 people were injured. Forensic experts were still identifying remains Monday. The first funerals were scheduled for Tuesday.

Relatives of the dead and spectators who survived the disaster, clutching carnations and handkerchiefs, streamed Monday into the Sknyliv air base for a brief memorial ceremony led by Ukrainian Orthodox clerics singing songs and reading prayers. One woman held a candle.

Flowers were strewn around the singed turf where the fighter jet exploded in a huge ball of fire. The site was cordoned off by security officials.

The jet had been performing a risky maneuver at low altitude when it nicked the ground, sliced off the nose of a plane on the ground and roared through a crowd of hundreds of spectators. The pilots catapulted and survived.

"The plane started killing people as it was coming in," said Ivan Kravchenko, who saw the crash from about 45 metres away. "I thought, 'It's flying too low over people. This is not a good stunt.' "

He said his grandson, four-year-old Vitaly, asked him later, "Grandpa, is that what's supposed to happen?"

Raisa Volodymyrova was standing next to the Il-76MD that was clipped by the Su-27.

"There were piles and piles of people around me. There was a body of a child lying on me," she recalled tearfully at Monday's ceremony.

The accident was the latest blow for Ukraine's cash-starved military.

Defence Minister Vladimir Shkidchenko tendered his resignation Sunday, which was being considered by President Leonid Kuchma. Mr. Shkidchenko's predecessor was fired after a Ukrainian missile accidentally downed a Russian passenger jet over the Black Sea.

Mr. Kuchma fired air-force Commander General-Colonel Vladimir Strelnikov and Lieutenant-Colonel S. Opyshchak, who were being detained on suspicion of "negligent attitude to military service that led to grave consequences," the Prosecutor General's Office said. Mr. Kuchma also fired the chief of the general staff.

"The culprits should be punished, there is no doubt," Mr. Kuchma told reporters. He said he will consider banning air shows altogether.

Mr. Shkidchenko had been in office less than a year. He was appointed last November after his predecessor resigned over the accidental downing of an Israeli passenger jet by a Ukrainian missile.

An investigation was launched immediately into Saturday's crash, and the man appointed to lead the probe made it clear he will focus on negligence among the air-force brass.

"The commission is examining several possible versions. These include negligence by the command of the Ukrainian air force and of the 14th air division or a technical malfunction," Yevgeny Marchuk told Russia's RTR television network.

Already, however, experts are blaming organizers of the air show for the disaster. Former Ukrainian air-force general Vadim Grechaninov told Russia's Interfax news service that the pilots of the Sukhoi jet were unable to avoid plowing into the onlookers because of improper safety measures on the ground, and because the plane was flying too low.

Video footage of the incident suggested that the pilots were not obeying rules stipulating that stunts should not be performed at altitudes less than 400 metres.

The plane itself may also prove to have been a contributing factor — many of Ukraine's military planes have been in service since the Soviet era.

Neighbouring Russia, with a crumbling jet fleet of its own, also suffered an air disaster Sunday, when a huge passenger jet crashed into a wooded area northwest of Moscow, shortly after leaving the Sherevmetyevo-1 airport.

The Ilyushin-86 aircraft, operated by Pulkovo Airlines, had just taken off for St. Petersburg, and barely missed crashing on a highway.

There were no passengers aboard the plane — though it had a capacity of about 350 — but the jet was carrying 16 crew members. Two flight attendants survived the crash; one was in critical condition last night.

Investigators said it was too early to say what may have caused the accident, which happened so fast the pilots of the Pulkovo airlines jet had little time to tell flight controllers what was wrong.

Although air-safety standards in the former Soviet Union have been under scrutiny for years, aerospace-industry data indicated that this was the first fatal crash of an Il-86 since it entered service in 1980.

A court will decide whether to arrest the two pilots after they recover from their injuries, prosecutors said.

With reports from Reuters and AP

[Skipper]

Originally posted by Rosey
Two main causes were being considered — pilot carelessness or mechanical failure of the 15-year-old plane.

That's what I said...

[Rosey]

Originally posted by Skipper


That's what I said...

i wasn't arguing with you. just looking for more info.