Warbird Information Exchange

The bottom line from where I'm sitting goes back to a saying we had in the USAF fighter community that said, "good tactics are inherently safe."

The best airshow warbird parade plans are ones that are simple to explain and simple to execute without any inputs from the airboss after he clears the formations into the box.

Pilots should walk out of the brief without any questions and the airboss freq should be quiet during the performance unless there is an emergency.

Neither of these two things occurred in Dallas.

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Randy, just curious - did you participate in the CAF airshow during the accident?

No. I was supposed to be PIC'ing the B-24 but (thankfully?) I could not get out of an airline trip so I wasn't there.

The B-24 PIC at the show is a peer of mine and the SIC was a high-time instructor in the Librerator who was my "instructor SIC" on both my B-24 and B-29 type rating checkrides.

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Thanks for answering. Yes, that is fortunate you were not there. I've been unlucky enough to see several warbird fatalities in person and it is not fun, especially if you know the people involved.

Transcript of the airboss interview was enlightening, outside of what i already said about surprise about cell phone use during the show, was a little surprised they didn't go into more depth about the actual incident, most of the interview was how he got into this line of work, procedures, previous experience ect. There were times when it was disputed what he said, the timing of what he said or didn't say, and they pretty much blew it off, seems to me they could have and should have had the recordings right there for reference.
Also didn't realize the impending takeoff of the B-29 loomed so large, there was significant concentration and effort going towards prepping this amazing bird for takeoff while the bombers and fighters were still buzzing around ,, And this around the same time the Stearman was landing. So there was more going on that just managing the warbirds, we shall see how significant this was in relation to what ended up happening.

On another note and totally unrelated to the incident, the other guy they interviewed, the observer, implied or said that he had experience airbossing for the Blue Angels.
This has got to be false or he misunderstood the question or wasn't thinking right, from all I have ever heard monitoring many many shows, airboss hands over airspace to the Blue Angels themselves when it is time for them to fly, and they manage their own shows with their own controllers.
Since they [or Tbirds] are always the last act, when they are done they hand airspace back to tower, the temp restrictions are lifted, show officially over.