mid air italy

[shafs64]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/11642564/Pilot-dies-after-light-planes-collide-during-air-show.html

[Guest ozzie]

Pretty well covered in the news tonight with footage of a dead stick landing in water with flip over from several different angles. Crowd extracted pilot from wreck before he drowned. Other pilot not so lucky with wing ripped off and crashed further out to sea.

 

Very popular airshow about halfway down the Italian east coast on the Adriatic Sea.

 

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/italian-air-show-plane-crash-5800311

 

 

[farri]

Amazing, how many accidents have occurred at air shows,over the years!....A real tragedy.

 

Frank.

 

 

[old man emu]

Amazing, how many accidents have occurred at air shows,over the years!....A real tragedy. Frank.

The main reason that air shows involving daring acts in the air have been so popular since roughly 1910 is that there is always the possibility of a collision sometime during the event.

 

It's an unfortunate reflection on the human psyche that humans like to see things meet a violent end. That's why the Romans enjoyed their gladiators; the medieval crowds flocked to jousts, and why we watch full-body contact football. It's why the media always includes "plummets" in its reports of airplane crashes.

 

Actually, for you word buffs, "plummet" derives from an naval word for a small lead (Pb) weight used for determining depth of water. Hence the phrase "to plumb the depths of [a subject]" Its verbal meaning relating to a fall only dates from the 1930's (the golden era of air shows), and actually refers to a high speed, vertical line descent. If you have the slightest knowledge of ballistic motion, you'll know that the trajectory of an object departing from horizontal motion is like the blue line in the diagram (don't worry about the real reason the graph was created, it's only for illustration.)

 

 

So airplanes never 'plummet' from the air unless their components lose all ability to create aerodynamic lift. How many times have you read WWll reports of the wings of bombers 'falling through the air like giant, fluttering leaves'?

 

Old Man Emu

 

 

[farri]

The main reason that air shows involving daring acts in the air have been so popular since roughly 1910 is that there is always the possibility of a collision sometime during the event.It's an unfortunate reflection on the human psyche that humans like to see things meet a violent end.Old Man Emu

Well I`ll be!!!!....I was going to say something similar, then thought," Better not ".....I`m glad you did!

 

Frank.

 

 

[turboplanner]

I'd disagree with that from my personal experience over twelve years, in speedway operations listening to crow reactions, and researching thousands of people to get more to come to the events.

 

Whenever there was a bad crash, the crowd reaction was a sickly silence - in some cases quite extended and subdued when it took some time for an extraction, but when the driver stood up and cheered, or lay on the stretcher and gave a weak wave, the stadium erupted in cheering.

 

Never, at any time did they like to see people hurt.

 

We promoted the sport as a family sport, on many tracks outlawing alcohol, and were rewarded with bigger attendances from whole families from the grandparents down to babies, and whenever I researched them, they wanted big fields so there was plenty of excitement but no grisly settings to frighten their kids.

 

I've never researched air shows, but have never heard a reaction that someone goes to see a crash, and my wife will not go, and does her best to talk me out of going because of the crowd fatalities overseas.

 

 

[Birdseye]

Never, at any time did they like to see people hurt.

I don't believe that OME was suggesting that anyone goes to see somebody hurt. The reality is that people do got to various sports and similar events for thrills. The Red Bull Air Race is a classic example, clipping the 'cones' is acceptable, but clipping the water certainly brings on the stunned silence.

 

 

[old man emu]

I like to think that we are more civilised now than the Romans when it comes to the treatment of violence. However I think you hit the nail on the head by raising the image of a big hit on the racetrack. I suppose I should have qualified what I said in the first place to indicate that the crowd likes to see the machine destroyed. When there is a bit hit, the crowd is excited by what they can clearly see is happening to the vehicle, but after everything stops whizzing around, they remember that the vehicle has a person inside, and then they become concerned for the welfare of the person. That is an explanation for what TP wrote in his first paragraph.

 

I think it would be the outlawing of alcohol and the resultant drop in bad behaviour that would have convinced people that an outing to the speedway was a good one for the family. But I still think that a lot of the sons and dads would be hoping to see some collisions.

 

OME