blancolirio has a very good video on the NTSB preliminary report about accident. I posted a video by him earlier. Here's the new one:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IRVqg-pCb6o

I have not seen it to the end, but the focus is on the "Air Boss" who seems to have f'ed up royally. The Bombers were supposed to fly a line 500 feet away from the crowd (parallel to runway), and fighters 1000 feet (1000 feet from crowd, 500 feet from bombers), as well as different altitudes for the two types.

The Air Boss at one point called for the fighters to fly to the 500 foot line, and the bombers to the 1000 foot line, while the bombers were on an OUTSIDE track for turning, and the fighters on an INSIDE track for turning. This is also backwards from the pre-flight briefing all the pilots had.

So, rather than flying parallel 500 feet from each other, the fighters "crossed over" the 1000 line that the bombers were now flying, to get to the parallel line 500 feet closer to the crowd. And at the SAME altitude, to boot.

The video explains that pretty well, so watch it if the above is not clear enough.

I'm actually sort of surprised the NTSB is not using the "blame the dead pilot" syndrome for this one (at least.... so far).

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Wowwww.
I will say the "blame the dead pilot(s)" excuse gets used tar too often.
Sounds like a MAJOR Air Boss error here. Something looked screwy about the flight formation to me right when the mid-air was reported.

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This is really sad. Considering that everybody knew everybody makes it even worse.

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On the fire side, we have been teaching for several years to turn off our strobes and rotators unless we are the "blockers" at the head of oncoming traffic due to this very issue. However, the LEO's never turn theirs off and there are usually a half dozen or more of them causing the majority of the issues with their bright blue and white strobes. It is blinding and I've heard it has even triggered seizures causing secondary wrecks.

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The "blame the dead pilot" reason for an aircraft crash is commonly used in military aviation accidents. If it isn't pilot error, the real reason is probably locked up in a classified file somewhere.

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Pull over and stop. That way this 61 yo old fart can get past you safely when he's running lights and sirens. And don't stare at the lights...

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This will be investigated by the NTSB. I worked with the NTSB on a few investigations back before I retired, they were always very professional and worked with a minimum of bias. I have the greatest respect for their work, and their efforts to get things right (much more so than the FAA).

Sixty years ago, the cause of major crashes was pretty much evenly split between mechanical problems and pilot error. But with years of improving technology and 'lessons learned', most of those mechanical problems have been ironed out. Unfortunately, being humans, pilots still mess up, and most accidents today are primarily caused by pilot error - with a lack of understanding of the automation often contributing (the 737 MAX fiasco not withstanding).

There is little doubt that this midair was the result of human error - the aircraft were working fine until ripped apart by the midair. The only real question is which human should get the lion's share of the blame.

You know it's impossible to rubberneck without staring into the lights.

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When in doubt, WHACK the GAS and DITCH the brake !!!

Yes, there is such a thing as NORMAL, if you have to ask what is "NORMAL" , you probably aren't !
Failure may not be an OPTION, but it is ALWAYS a POSSIBILITY.
ALL systems are GO for MAYHEM, CHAOS, TURMOIL, FIASCOS, and HAVOC !

Yep scared the PEE outta me nearly clipping that fireman that I NEVER EVEN SAW, despite VIGOROUSLY looking!

Well, my previous comment didn't take long to come to fruition... day before Christmas break I was out on 95 north of Shiner dropping a couple kids off... it's right after the turn onto 95 off a winding country highway (1891) that cuts cross country for miles and miles-- I drop off a number of kids on side country roads out there, mostly gravel, including one kid out at a ranch about 6 miles or so back near Charlottenburg cemetery.

Anyway, I came up to the T intersection and looked both ways as I stopped-- to the south (left) there's about a 1/3-1/2 mile of open road that then disappears down into a hollow, and on the right, about 1/2 mile or so before it dips down into a shallower hollow that I can see down into. The driveway the kids get off at is about maybe 100 yards from the turn. I look, and there's just the VERY VERY top edge of a cement truck coming up out of the valley to the left, I could barely see the top of his cement mixer tub and the clearance lights on the truck roof, so I'm like, "I have plenty of time to turn safely" and make my turn. I flip on my yellow flashing warning lights to signal I'm going to stop the bus, and accelerate up to about 25 before I start easing into the brakes to glide up to the stop... I get the bus stopped and open the door, which automatically turns on the red flashing warning lights, and I look up in the kid mirror and see the two kids getting up from their seats and starting toward the front from about the middle of the bus. I glance out my passenger side mirror to make sure nobody's doing something stupid like trying to pass the bus on the right and blow past the door (we had a driver save a little kids life by seeing one do just that a few years back-- she reached out and grabbed the kid and yanked them back by their backpack just as they were about to step out of the bus into the path of that friggin' moron who was zipping around the bus on the right). The right mirror is clear so I glance in the left mirror and I see the concrete truck coming right at the bus at about 45 mph, suddenly laying on the brakes trying to stop... All I had time to do was throw my arm across the aisle to keep the kids from getting off, and saying, "WAIT, WAIT, WAIT!" because I was thinking "oh, sh!t he's gonna hit" and I glanced back in the mirror to see him peel around the bus in a hard lean, MAYBE clearing the bus's back bumper by about a foot or so, then he's swerving to straighten out. Went from about a 25 degree right lean to rolling to the left, he came past my side window at about 25 mph up on two wheels-- I'm looking at the undercarriage of his cement truck as he's passing me, and I THINK he could have saved it if he hadn't overcorrected and tried to whip right around us, instead that just tipped it right on over onto the left side and the cement truck slid right off the road and into the ditch, with his cab and engine pointed right at the middle of the road in the left lane. The dirt and grass had barely stopped flying and the kids were like "I can't believe we just saw that!" and I was like "Yeah" and so I check my mirrors again, we're not about to end up in a 12 car pileup and nobody's coming up behind him (or us) so I go on and tell the two kids getting off to go on and get up the driveway to the house, go straight home! I obviously can't sit in the road, so after the kids are heading up the driveway I close the door to turn the lights off, pull up off the side of the road out of the way, turn off my master switch for the loading lights and turn on my four-way emergency flashers, and open the door. My daughter's boyfriend (our new son since his mom and stepdad kicked him out after abusing him and I wasn't going to see him living on the street) is standing in front of my bus. The kids are worried about the other driver-- the rollover racked the cab to the passenger side and knocked every window out of the truck, and as I had been parking off the road, I looked out and saw he was standing up in the cab where the driver's side window had been, fiddling about in the truck, and a couple local ranchers had already stopped and was helping him step out through where the windshield had been. I had already grabbed the radio and called the school to report the truck rolling over and asking them to call 9/11 for an ambulance and police, told them we were NOT hit, everybody on the bus was fine, BUT seeing how it happened while I was stopped on the roadway, I didn't think it proper to continue the route until a cop had arrived and told me it was okay to leave. Since the guy was up and stepping out of the truck, I said to myself, "well he's okay, I'm gonna stay here and look after my bus kids. Turns out my son and a friend of his had been following the bus as they were heading cross-country to another friend's house to do some work for them and pick up a little extra cash, and they had ALMOST pulled out in front of him but figured by the time I had pulled the bus out he was just a little too close to take the chance pulling out. The boys said he never even hit the brakes til he was nearly up on the bus, and by that time it was too late-- he was going about 65-70 when he zipped past the intersection they were still sitting at. They saw the whole thing. They said they were glad they didn't try to make the turn because if they'd been between the bus and him they'd have been goners. The cement truck driver admitted that he had the cruise control on (which in and of itself ain't necessarily doing wrong, BUT I'd bet a dollar to a donut hole that he had it on so he could play with his phone) and then said he had "trouble with the brakes" (as in I guess they won't stop a fully loaded concrete mix truck doing 70 like they would a Honda Civic... go figure). Gotta give the guy points for not hitting us, even if he did roll his cement truck. Of course the concrete poured out the back about 2 feet deep into a huge pile about 4 feet wide and 8 feet long or so, and there was a pretty good motor oil and diesel spill. The school sent my boss out with a 14 passenger "sprinter" van to take the last five kids home, while I waited on the trooper to arrive since it was a commercial vehicle wreck and a school bus. I talked to a sheriff deputy and a local cop, the deputy got my license and handed it off to the trooper who we waited for about an hour... the school superintendent and HS principal came out and we stood around BS'ing with the fire dept. guys who were shoveling a little dirt on the diesel and oil spill while we waited, and EMS checked out the truck driver. When the trooper finally arrived, he took some pics and talked to the other driver, then came got my side of it... told him I was stopped for the drop-off with the red lights on, and he's coming by on two wheels... He hands me my license back and is like "no contact with the bus?" "Nope" I said, he says, "Well I'm going to write it up as a single vehicle rollover then, gimme your phone number if I have any questions" so we're all good. In the meantime the boss had dropped the kids off and took the sprinter van back to the school, switched to the school's little Dodge minivan, and brought it out and left it for me, and drove the bus back to the school and parked it. Once the trooper turned me loose, I jumped into the school minivan and drove it back, and got my minivan to go home.

I tell you these people now, they drive just crazy. Everybody's on the d@mn phone not paying attention... and while you can usually get away with that in a regular car/van/pickup/SUV, in a loaded commercial vehicle at speed, that's just insane, because you have to be thinking ahead and looking ahead, not farting around not paying attention. Course the kid daddy convinced the superintendent and principal that I need to go back to pulling up their driveway to the house to drop the kids, which means I have to basically stop to turn in their driveway and then pull out into traffic AGAIN which just DOUBLES the risk IMHO; the boss and I agreed the best way to do it would be to just do ALL the drop offs on the highway FIRST then double back to the country road, which is how I drove it that Friday, as I could turn on the lights FURTHER BACK from their driveway and slow down FURTHER BACK to give traffic more time and notice that we were going to stop the bus, since people cannot be bothered to actually pay attention. We were overruled, so I'm just driving it like I have been, except now I have to drive up their driveway and turn around in there to get back out on the highway. Stupid IMHO but it is what it is... school looks only at liability of being sued, not safety or sense. Oh well...

Anyway, since we started back from Christmas vacation, I've had a semi whip around me at the next stop up the road, gotta go get another load of sand for the fracking operation-- it's a fracking emergency after all! Think the concrete truck was one in a line of trucks hauling cement out to a well site, for that matter, probably concreting the casing. Had a white SUV run my loading lights twice in town the last two days, in front of the wire works... laws are for other people...

I give up. Guess it's gonna take some kid(s) getting killed before the cops and people start taking this stuff seriously...

Later! OL J R

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