Preliminary NTSB Report on the Oshkosh P51 Crash Released

"Matt Whiting" wrote in message
news
This has squat to do with the NOTAM and the normal oshkosh show arrivals.
The airport was effectively closed except for the
five planes in the air "race" demo and the DC3 that was launching
to drop the skydivers for the next act.

This is perhaps tangentally-related, but, for those of you who have
participated or monitored -during- the airshow, how much pressure is put on
the performers to return as quickly as possible after their performance.

The reason I ask is because at the Hillsboro Airshow a few years ago, which
I was attending and monitoring, the tower brought the warbirds in so fast to
keep on schedule that they were stacking up on the runway. What happened
is that a Mig, I think it was, blew a tire on the runway as it braked to
avoid the airplane ahead of it which hadn't cleared the active yet. As it
was trying to hobble off with a flat main tire, another warbird careened
nearly off the runway and almost groundlooped trying to avoid a collision
with the Mig.

The impression is that it was so important to leave time for Truckasaurus
and the other events that the warbird pilots were put into an unsafe
situation which resulted in two damaged airplanes, a near-collision and a
lack of safety that was likely apparent to every spectator watching. It
looked very unprofessional on the part of the pilots but if you were
monitoring the radio chatter you could hear that they were being rushed
along and that the pilots were a little upset about it. Safety literally
took second place to the airshow schedule. Is that common?

-c