DALLAS (AP) — Just before a mid-air collision that killed six people at a Dallas air show, a group of historic fighter jets was instructed to fly ahead of a formation of bombers with no prior plan to coordinate the attack. altitude, according to a federal report released Wednesday. . The report did not give a cause of the accident.
A P-63 Kingcobra fighter was banking to the left when it struck a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber behind the left wing during the Nov. 12 air show. with World War II-era planes, the National Transportation Safety Board said in its preliminary findings. All six people on board the planes – the fighter pilot and bomber pilot, co-pilot and three crew members – were killed when both planes broke up in flight, and the bomber caught fire and then exploded on impact.
There was no altitude coordination at pre-flight briefings or while the planes were airborne, the NTSB said. The report said that the Kingcobra was the third in a formation of three fighters and the B-17 was the lead of a bomber formation of five ships.
Eric Weiss, a spokesman for the NTSB, said the agency is trying to determine the sequence of maneuvers that led to the accident. He is also examining whether such air shows typically have altitude conflict reduction plans.
“Those are precisely the types of questions our researchers are asking,” Weiss said. “What was the process? What is the correct process? And what happened?”
John Cox, a former airline captain with more than 50 years of experience, was surprised that the NTSB discovered that there was no altitude summary before or during the flight. He said these take place at other air shows, but he’s not sure if they’re standard for the Memorial Air Force, which hosts the Wings over Dallas show.
A person familiar with show operations that day said aircrews received general altitude instructions at their morning pre-show briefing. However, there was no discussion of the specific altitudes for each pass the aircraft was to make, said the person, who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and did so on condition of anonymity.
Fighters typically fly above bombers, and when a group is called in to make a pass that could put planes at the same or near the same altitude, they keep a lateral separation from each other, the person said. In general, the person continued, it is the responsibility of the air chief to establish a plan to maintain vertical or lateral separation.
Wings Over Dallas was the group’s last show of the season, the person said.
The NTSB said the air chief had told the formation of fighters to proceed to a line that was 500 feet (152 meters) from where the audience was lined up at Dallas Executive Airport, while the formation of bombers had been told to fly 1,000 feet (304 meters). meters) of the viewing area of the audience.
The NTSB said a navigation device on the bomber “contained position information relevant to the crash” but a device on the fighter did not record during the flight.
The Memorial Air Force, which put on the Veterans Day show, said Wednesday that it continues to work with the NTSB and is grateful for that agency’s “diligence in investigating anything that might have been a factor in causing the crash.” . The group said they cannot speculate on the cause of the accident.
The Memorial Air Force previously identified the victims as: Terry Barker, Craig Hutain, Kevin “K5” Michels, Dan Ragan, Leonard “Len” Root and Curt Rowe.
All of the men were volunteers who had gone through a strict process of time-logging and training flights and were carefully vetted, Hank Coates, executive director of the Commemorative Air Force, said after the crash.
Cox said the planes were flown by experienced pilots and that it is “practically certain” that the pilot of the smaller, more maneuverable fighter did not see the bomber. He said that understanding how this happened will be a central challenge for researchers.
“What happened for two pilots of this skill level to end up in the same airspace at the same time?” said Cox, the founder of Safety Operating Systems, which helps smaller airlines and corporate flight services around the world with safety planning.
The air show collision came three years after a bomber crash in Connecticut. who killed seven, and amid constant worry about the safety of shows involving older warplanes.
A cornerstone of American air power during World War II, the B-17 is a massive four-engined bomber that was used in daylight raids against Germany. The Kingcobra, an American fighter, was used primarily by Soviet forces during the war. Most of the B-17s were scrapped at the end of World War II and only a few remain today, largely on display in museums and air shows, according to Boeing.
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Associated Press writer Tara Copp in Washington contributed to this report.
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