Collings Foundation B-17G 909 Has Crashed :-( 10/2/2019

[DoraNineFan]

*The plane's nose apparently hit that ILR mast. Note the piece of curved Perspex on the ground. If that was indeed a nose hit, I can only guess what might have happened in the cockpit. Sadly, we'll never know for sure on that point

That could also be a landing light lens, right?

At 1:49 in the NTSB video the investigators appear to be looking at part of the ILS near the main debris. This also looks like where the right wing came to rest.

[k5083]

I agree. When you think about it, the safety record of the "touring" heavy bombers is pretty darn good. I can't remember the last fatality in this country with a B-17. Would it be as far back as the fire fighting ships?

While the Liberty Belle was not a fatal crash, that is two destroyed aircraft in ten years. You might be hard-pressed to find another non-experimental aircraft type with that high a loss-to-flying hours record in this decade.

I have no issues with flying the B-17s. There are plenty in museums and almost a double-digit number in the air, so these are not rare. To my mind, the educational value outweighs the risk - I think quite differently for the PoF flying wing.

However, the B-24s are significantly rarer. This was also a type that was not as good a flyer as the B-17, and so I would guess to have a greater risk per flying hour. The loss of one of the two B-24 flyers, a risk that may be quite statistically significant if these these are flown for another 20 years, would be a severe loss to the community of surviving aircraft. Of course, these are flown at owner's discretion, but I would personally like to see these retired.

I always find Kevin to be a voice of reason in these discussions. Yes, the issue is not just how many fatal accidents there have been, but how many per what. A safety rate has a denominator as well as a numerator.

Until yesterday, heavy bombers flying experience rides had a perfect safety record as regards fatal accidents. The denominator doesn't matter when the numerator is zero. Now they don't. Now the fatal accident rate is one per ... something.

Is the "something" total flight hours? In general aviation, the least safe part of civil aviation, the NTSB quotes a rate of about 1 to 2 fatal accidents per 100,000 flying hours. How many hours have been put on warbird B-17s, B-24s and B-29s in the past 40 years? I don't know, but I don't think it's 100,000. This is Kevin's point above. If you're measuring safety records the way the NTSB does, breaking out any category of warbirds from overall general aviation never looks good on a per-hour basis.

Look at it another way, from the standpoint of a member of the public interested in an experience ride. If I'm considering the risk, what matters to me is how likely is it that I will die on this flight. So fatal accidents per ride flights flown is the right calculation. If the risk of dying on a bomber ride were 1 in 1,000, almost anybody would say, Forget it. At 1 in 10,000, some people might be interested, if they valued the experience enough. At 1 in 100,000, you'd be approaching the risk level of overall general aviation, and plenty of people would be interested. Although, plenty wouldn't. Not everybody thinks private planes are safe enough to fly in.

So if the relevant denominator is ride flights, how many have there been? Again, I don't know. The wikipedia entry for Nine-O-Nine says it completed over 1,200 tour stops. How many rides did it fly on those stops? Maybe 5 or 10 per stop, for a total of 6,000 to 12,000? Nine-O-Nine has been the most active touring bomber over the past 30 years. Suppose we estimate there have been 20,000 to 30,000 ride flights over the past 30 years by the whole B-17, B-24 and B-29 "fleet." That risk level -- well, it is what it is. We can say it's less than this other activity or more than that one, but whether it's "acceptable" is a judgment call.

Of course, there is a bogus aspect to these calculations because the number of accidents is so small. Until yesterday there were no fatal accidents in ride flight bombers, but no sensible person would have thought they were 100% safe. There could be another fatal accident tomorrow, and then the "safety rate" would be cut in half; or we could go another 20 years and 30,000 flights without a fatal, and then the rate would be half what it is today. Personally, I have never bought or accepted an offer of any ride in an operational warbird type because I am generally aware of the fatal and non-fatal accidents, incidents and emergencies that have happened to all types of warbirds, and of the small number of hours and flights these planes log, and concluded that the risk is not worth it, at least not while I have dependent children. I can say for sure that I have talked to friends who are interested in warbirds but not buffs like we have on this forum, who were planning on maybe riding in a Collings bomber this weekend in Westchester, and who have drastically readjusted their calculus in the last 24 hours of whether they will ever buy a bomber ride.

August

[Chris Brame]

Last time I saw Nine-O-Nine back in August, I asked one of the crew how plans were going for their other B-17, and was told it hopefully would be flying in early 2020. This would give Nine-O-Nine a chance to go down for major maintenance. Who knows what will happen now.

[Chuck Giese]

*The plane's nose apparently hit that ILR mast. Note the piece of curved Perspex on the ground. If that was indeed a nose hit, I can only guess what might have happened in the cockpit. Sadly, we'll never know for sure on that point

That could also be a landing light lens, right?

My impression from seeing the video is that the plexi fragment is from a cheek gun window, probably left window. Hard to tell, but it looked like the correct curves.

[bmoran]

NTSB Preliminary Video Report

Last edited by bmoran on Thu Oct 03, 2019 8:39 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[exhaustgases]

With any accident of an old piston powered prop plane, I always see people posting that the age of the plane is the problem.
Similar to the grounding of the fire bombers years ago. What people don't realized is, most all the old prop planes were over built, especially the B17, just look at the ones that were shot up and missing main parts and returned to base with their crew.
And the old planes can be completely rebuilt using new materials to do so. And yes RIP to all that got killed in this horrible sad crash.
Crashes happen with new aircraft as well, so I hope there is never a plan to shut down or stop flying the old prop planes.
Just a thought, would a gear up belly landing saved the day? Because something caused it to veer off course. Its so so sad they were so close to making it back just fine. Maybe airports need to do something else about the technical junk at the end of the runways.

[Mark Allen M]

The recent Dive Boat tragedy in my neck of the woods in which 34 poor souls lost their lives (and a boat I personally have been on a half dozen times) has brought the reality of some of the horrors that the outfit that owned the boat is currently dealing with. The boating community in the Santa Barbara CA area is extremely tight knit. Everyone knows everyone and most folks in the area have been on that particular boat I would guess more than once. It was, and obviously still is, a very hard hit on the local community. Most all of the victims were not from the local area but their loses have really hit hard locally as one could imagine.

Three things (among others) that seem to be playing out daily concerning this dive boat tragedy in the news and through local word of mouth. The realities that lawsuits are inevitable, liability insurance coverage will either be too expensive or difficult to find and, from what I've been hearing, the boat owner is beyond devastated and his crew members are suffering survivor guilt. Already one poor fella is suffering from PTSD from what has been reported. Not sure what the future holds for those poor people.

I fear that all the folks involved, in one way or another, in this B-17 tragedy will also battle their own demons for a very long time. Which is very sad and my heart goes out to all who are affected by this accident, but just like in my area, there's going to be a great out-pouring of care and support for those who need it. It's always that way for goodness sake.

The loss of the airplane is unfortunate, the loss of life is extremely tragic. I'll miss 909 coming to Santa Barbara, as I've seen the Collings group here several times over the years. But as far as whether math equations about odds of accidents happening or flying rare aircraft is a logical idea is not for me to debate. I know what my choices would be and that's just for me.

I'm not sure how this will all turn out, far too early to even speculate, so all I can hope is that the poor folks involved, in whatever their role, will find the peace and support they will desperately need in the days, weeks and months to come.

I can say that the Collings B-24 without the company of their B-17 won't feel quite right to me, but I hope they recover and find a way to continue the great work they do. No matter what capacity they decide to do it. They've got my continued support.

[Xray]

I am seriously doubting any blanket legislation to end public rides in old, historic aircraft. Certainly not on a federal level, at the most maybe some of the more paranoid, legislation happy nanny states might make an effort in that direction.

There was lots of talk and speculation about banning airshows after the horrific crash in Germany many years back, that obviously went nowhere.

[RyanShort1]

NTSB Preliminary Video Report

Wow, you'd think the NTSB would've known a few of those answers better, and it was obvious that some of the reporters had agenda-type questions...

[RyanShort1]

Just a thought, would a gear up belly landing saved the day? Because something caused it to veer off course. Its so so sad they were so close to making it back just fine. Maybe airports need to do something else about the technical junk at the end of the runways.

The amount of "hits" on the "technical junk" is pretty low. The plane would've glided farther and stopped faster on it's belly, but it's looking like the pilots were 10 feet away from a successful emergency landing if the ILS point is what doomed them. Pretty sad.

[RandolphB]

I am seriously doubting any blanket legislation to end public rides in old, historic aircraft. Certainly not on a federal level, at the most maybe some of the more paranoid, legislation happy nanny states might make an effort in that direction.

There was lots of talk and speculation about banning airshows after the horrific crash in Germany many years back, that obviously went nowhere.

Change in procedures did happen after the German crash. One of my wife's cousins was an 8 or 9 year old and badly burned in the incident. When he found out I was interested, he drug me to a computer and pointed at himself in the famous video running in front of the camera as the midair happened. His story of being airlifted to a remote base and being separated from his family for an extended length of time were amazing. Everyone thought he was killed. His father was Air Force and word of mouth brought them back together. The young man grew up with a passion for aviation and joined the Air Force as a career. Sidenote: As soon as I showed interest the rest of the family cleared out...they were like, "Oh geez, that guy asked him about it!".

[Xray]

I am seriously doubting any blanket legislation to end public rides in old, historic aircraft. Certainly not on a federal level, at the most maybe some of the more paranoid, legislation happy nanny states might make an effort in that direction.

There was lots of talk and speculation about banning airshows after the horrific crash in Germany many years back, that obviously went nowhere.

Change in procedures did happen after the German crash. One of my wife's cousins was an 8 or 9 year old and badly burned in the incident. When he found out I was interested, he drug me to a computer and pointed at himself in the famous video running in front of the camera as the midair happened. His story of being airlifted to a remote base and being separated from his family for an extended length of time were amazing. Everyone thought he was killed. His father was Air Force and word of mouth brought them back together. The young man grew up with a passion for aviation and joined the Air Force as a career. Sidenote: As soon as I showed interest the rest of the family cleared out...they were like, "Oh geez, that guy asked him about it!".

I hope there were changes in procedures, the maneuver of aircraft barreling towards a crowd line would not have been allowed in the USA. We are of course supposed to learn lessons from fatalities caused by human guided machines and take steps to minimize them from happening again. None of this is applicable to the 909 crash so lets end it here, and thanks for sharing the story.

[Firebird]

I agree. When you think about it, the safety record of the "touring" heavy bombers is pretty darn good. I can't remember the last fatality in this country with a B-17. Would it be as far back as the fire fighting ships?

While the Liberty Belle was not a fatal crash, that is two destroyed aircraft in ten years. You might be hard-pressed to find another non-experimental aircraft type with that high a loss-to-flying hours record in this decade.

You could go back a bit further and make it 3 in 30 years if you add the French IGN B-17 that crashed and burned on take-off at RAF Binbrook during filming of the 'Memphis Belle', although again, like Liberty Belle it was not a fatal crash, remarkably as that was in the circumstances of the crash.

[aerovin]

To make a fine but important distinction, Liberty Belle was not a crash but rather an off-field landing with a subsequent uncontrollable fire.

[4RG.I.'S]

The calls for stopping these experience flights (and, depending on how Mr. Blumenthal's statements are read, possibly warbird flights in general?) are sadly beginning...
From Senator Blumenthal:
"I am deeply concerned that these vintage aircraft, decades old, some of them having been involved in crashes before, are still flying," Blumenthal told Fox News. "Until we know exactly what caused this crash, a major tragedy, whether it was a defect in the machine or some problem with maintenance or flying. There should be very serious scrutiny over these planes before they're allowed back in the air."

From a warbird owner/lawyer:

Those who step on board the vintage aircraft may not know or realize the unique risks that come with the planes that were never intended to be used for civilian tour flights, according to Michael Slack a former NASA engineer, a licensed pilot and aviation attorney with Slack Davis Sanger.

"We have a real disconnect between original purpose and the contemporary purpose," Slack said Thursday. Slack, who owns his own World War II-era plane, a North American T-6 Texan trainer, told Fox News that aircraft such as the B-17 face "significant" maintenance challenges with the older engine and hydraulic systems not using original manufactured, but fabricated, parts in order to keep flying.

The biggest risk for passengers on such vintage aircraft is a crash-landing or off-airport landing, according to Slack, due to the possibility of post-impact fires because of how the aircraft's fuel tanks are structured and the "lack of crashworthy design." The aircraft's older fuel compartment system is not designed for modern standards, which leaves those on board, particularly at risk if there is a rupture that allows the "volatile" fuel to disperse, according to Slack.
Though nothing should overshadow the loss of life, prayers for those involved.