F-16 Crashes in routine practice. Vid.

www.youtube.com...

At the link above is a pretty close shot of I beleive a Thunderbird airman tryouts with horrible ending results. Thats a very expensive screw up Imo.

I'm not a big plane person, but that video didn't look like routine practice to me. Is it really routine to perform a loop and then swoop in for a low pass on the runway?

Originally posted by chaosrain
I'm not a big plane person, but that video didn't look like routine practice to me. Is it really routine to perform a loop and then swoop in for a low pass on the runway?

Of course not. "Routine practice" my [backside]...

Thats an airshow stunt (as well as an airshow F-16), and the pilot is extremely stupid to do it at less-than-safe height. On the plus side, he made a rather professional smoke screen there...

Looks like an airshow rather than a practice to me as there appears to be quite a sizeable crowd present.

Nothing exciting like that ever happens at air shows I go to. Mind you, they tend more to be British pilots where I go


*braces for mass sense of humour failure*

So is this vid old news to you guys? I really dont remember seeing it before and Ive pm'd the original poster of the vid with no reply as of yet. Yeah I beleive it was an USAF Thunderbird Air show not practice gone horribly wrong. But the the loop is part of their Routine I do beleive. Amazingly stupid flying caught on film and another reason to limit older airframe extreme air show manuevers by the armed forces. Hopefully the guy lived but what a shame that 15 million $$$ had to go up in smoke.

Yes, it is old news.
The air show crash happened due to pilot's error.

A pilot's error caused a Thunderbirds F-16C to crash shortly after takeoff during a September airshow at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho. The pilot ejected just before the aircraft impacted the ground.
Mishaps News: Thunderbird accident report released

seekerof

The aircraft was supposed to be doing a takeoff to split S but forgot to allow for the altitude of the airfield, instead of climbing to 2500 feet the pilot only climbed to 1600. Not enough altitude.

That is the pic I have on my desktop.
It expressed my feelings that day.

I'm glad the pilot was ok.

Yes this is an old crash from 2003. Here is some additional footage from in cockpit and a more detailed explaination of the crash.


Cockpit Vid Link Here


Story Here