Think about cars. Some stuff will fail after a period of time (e.g. rust, rubber perishing, etc) and some will fail with usage and distance (e.g. brake pads wearing out).
The point of no return would have been very early on, probably near the start of the loop. Past that, there was nothing to be done, good intentions or not. It's just physics, and if you don't have enough energy or enough height to sacrifice in order to open some more choices, it's going where it's going like throwing a rock. All you could do is stay put and hope your trajectory is kind to you.
I'm slightly upset that the pilot didn't steer 20 metres to the left and land in the field. I am aware this is unreasonable, but it was extremely close to it.
Find something resembling a flight simulator with half decent physics - hell, even Grand Theft Auto's probably good enough these days - and try a loop for yourself. You might as well ask why a train driver didn't swerve; only a few yards would have done it.
It's really not - but almost all airfields are surrounded by roads, if not residential areas or worse. The regulations have adapted to where they are, successfully, to prevent huge casualties from aircraft crashing into the crowds, but you can't avoid all associated risk. As others point out, the chances of crashing onto the A27 and not the largely empty South Downs were, by the geographic nature of it, very, very small, so you don't get much better than that without either cancelling it or having it barely visible to the audience.
XH558 is a ridiculous folly but at least it is/was backed up by proper technical authorities. They're pulling their support and it will come to an end as a result.
Noone ever "planned" for it to end up on the A27. I imagine it was supposed to come out of the loop and do a low pass over the airfield for display purposes, the lowest point being over the airfield. There is therefore a risk to a wide area, firstly the entire radius of the flight plan, but still a large area even if focusing on the bottom of the loop. You could now argue, with the benefit of hindsight, that the risk to traffic from this plan was unacceptably high. You could do the same, however, regarding the presence of any airfield perimeter road, and such accidents have happened, including on British motorways.
Nope. Bournemouth Airshow largely takes place over the sea, but a Red Arrows aircraft still crashed on approach to the airport, which under only slightly different circumstances could have been the same. They still have to operate these vintage hunks of junk from somewhere, and you can't escape the fact that if it's high in the sky, it can still fall on a lot of places. You can't make it safe, you can only make it safer or kill it entirely. And if you kill it, on a risk calculation, you'll be left to muse over what will be next.
I agree to a certain extent, and I think the civil risk balanced against its purely entertainment-based reward creates a very dubious proposition, but it was at least professionally supported (legally warranted?) by Marshalls and I think BAES, RR, etcetera. It's not entirely frivolous. I don't know what the state of affairs with Hunters and so on is.
Actually, the point of no return is at some point past the top of loop. Rolling out at that point converts a loop into a half Cuban Eight, from which there is plenty of height to recover.
He may have had no control. The stall speed (the speed below which the wings have no lift) increases with the square root of wing loading. At the bottom of the loop, he may have been aware he was too close to the ground, and pulled hard. Pulling hard increased wing loading. Increasing wing loading increased stall speed. If his stall speed increased above his airspeed, he wouldn't be able to steer.
True, if you do realise that you need to abort. Otherwise, if you do persist, the outcome is baked in from early on.
But our air displays are over the sea and a red arrow crashed on the way back to the air field. I still think it's too risky. I'd rather see our air show go back to the airport than have planes pissing around over a busy seaside town which is what happens here.
I did wonder if he was trying to land it on the westbound section of the A27 after the lights. if they were red, which from the pictures it looks like they were, the road would of been quite empty, maybe some cars coming from the airport. If that was the case unfortunately it didn't work.
