Check this out.

[Unregistered]

Has anyone seen this yet?
Jason S. http://aero-news.net/index.cfm?Conte...-2a5ca23f40fa&

[T. Adams]

Makes you wonder

The way I see it from reading the whole NTSB report is that the Corsair pilot flat screwed up big time. It just amazes me that they can find EAA and Pardue to blame also. I guess if I ever get rear ended at a stop light, it will be partly my fault because I decided to stop!!! How assinine.

[FlyNride]

Remember though, this is a civil jury finding, NOT the NTSB. The NTSB found that EAA/Pardue had no fault at all.

Doctor's now a quadriplegic, so naturally our liberal court system and aviation-ignorant juries had to find a way to give him some deep-pocket insurance money.

[RandyGoss75]

Doctor Accident

I have known Laird (Lad) Doctor for over 20 years,
as an AT-6 Crew Member, Race Pilot and T-6 Pace Pilot.

Lad has flown many aircraft- WWII Trainers/Fighters and Jet Fighter aircraft....I would consider him a very good pilot.


I was not at Oshkosh when the accident happened, but did see video and news footage of the terrible accident.

It was an ACCIDENT......sh*t happens.......attacking Lad's character is not going to make it any better........

I'm very sorry Lad has such life altering injuries....and I am grateful that Howard was not injured........and I don't "blame" anyone......

Randy Goss

[T. Adams]

Act's of God

If you work for a company of any size the first thing you learn about is safety. The first of five safety principles where I work is, ALL INCIDENTS ARE PREVENTABLE!!. Notice the word accident is missing. Unless you really believe this principle, you can't work safely in my opinion, and you will not work for me!! #!#@(* does not just happen. EVERY incident has a cause, unless it is an act of God. This incident had a cause and the NTSB found it. Anybody at work who tells me, "It just happened", is on there way out the door.

[AAFO_WSagar]

Let's keep it civil...

Before this discussion gets out of control, I'd like to say a few words and hope we all can take a deep breath and think before we speak on this issue.

First of all, obviously, the real loser in this case, no matter what the legal outcome, is Lad Doctor. He's the one who has the terrible physical problem of being totally paralized for life. None of us could begin to imagine what that means to a human being unless we have been there or are there ourselves.

Whatever caused the accident to happen, it was a terrible tragedy and looking back and trying to make sure something like this never happen again is the only kind of looking back that should be done.

I don't believe any of us in this thread were there when it happened, reading the NTSB narrative of the crash, it's hard to see how in the world it happened, but, it happened.

Mr. Adams feels that accidents are all preventable, while I agree that many accidents are, indeed, preventable, I do not agree that all are. I do agree with Randy Goss that sometimes, $hit does just happen.

I'm not trying to say that this one could not have been prevented, hindsight is always 20/20.

It happened and the way the legal system works, the survivors decided that their tremendous medical and living expenses stemming from the accident needed to be paid for by all those involved in the accident and the court, be it legally right or wrong, agreed with them.

The courts and insurance companies will frequently assign percentile of blame on everyone involved with any accident, again, right or wrong, that's just the way it works.

If this discussion continues, which, in complete honesty, I don't see any constructive reason that it should.. Let's try to keep in mind that Lad Doctor was the loser in this case, no amount of money will return him to good health and mobility, no amount of writing in this thread will turn the clock back and change what happened that day.

Please be civil, not only to each other, but be civil to Mr. Doctor and his family, I'm sure we can not begin to understand the amount of suffering they have gone through and will continue to go through.

Thank You,
Wayne Sagar

[Randy Haskin]

Re: Act's of God

Originally posted by T. Adams
If you work for a company of any size the first thing you learn about is safety. The first of five safety principles where I work is, ALL INCIDENTS ARE PREVENTABLE!!. Notice the word accident is missing. Unless you really believe this principle, you can't work safely in my opinion, and you will not work for me!! #!#@(* does not just happen. EVERY incident has a cause, unless it is an act of God. This incident had a cause and the NTSB found it. Anybody at work who tells me, "It just happened", is on there way out the door.

I don't know how to answer this post without sounding like it's mudslinging....but that sentiment is pure bunk when applied to the world of flying high performance aircraft.

[T. Adams]

If anybody is offended I apologize, and I'm not a pilot either, but stuff does not just happen, whether your flying high performance aircraft or racing cars, or just going to your everyday factory job. I know at the company I work for (in the paper industry), if you don't really believe that every incident can be prevented you don't last long. This is a huge change from the past when everyone from top management on down held the false belief that "stuff just happens" and we will hurt or kill a few workers every year. The company wide goal can be repeated by every single employee that works for this company, "Less than Zero". That means NO INCIDENTS. Each and every incident has a root cause, machines just don't reach out a bite you, hands don't get caught in machines by themselves. Wayne's right I don't believe that anything is an "accident", it happens for a reason and can be prevented.

[Randy Haskin]

Originally posted by T. Adams
if you don't really believe that every incident can be prevented you don't last long.

Yes, you *can* have a 100% safety record in the flying business -- you just never leave the ground!

I have had close friends killed while flying for a multitude of reasons, and you're right...they all could have been prevented. Unfortunately, the actions that would have needed to have been taken to prevent the accidents would also have prevented our mission from being accomplished.

Take Navy carrier pilots, for example. The Navy "expects" to lose one fighter and one pilot per 6-month cruise. That is unheard of for the USAF, yet that is the order of the day for the Navy. Why? Because carrier aviation is incredibly dangerous...a series of consecutive miracles that a group of highly skilled individuals pull off on a daily basis. And, over the course of time, mistakes are made or machines fail....and people die or are hurt. Could that death be prevented? Yup...but at the expense of being able to project airpower from the high seas.

Safety in the flying business is *always* a risk management matrix. In order to fly, there is always inherent risk. You have to constantly weigh risk versus reward, because no matter *how* careful you are, people make mistakes and machines will fail. Because aviation is so unforgiving of failure or mistake, disaster generally results.

I guarantee you that nobody who straps on an airplane on a day to day basis has any misgivings about exactly what the inherent risks are. I sure don't....I think about it every day that I arm my ejection seat and realize *why* there is a rocket sitting right under my ass and a parachute behind my back

[FlyNRide]

Randy Goss said:

It was an ACCIDENT......sh*t happens.......attacking Lad's character is not going to make it any better........

- - -

Randy, please don't misunderstand me. That wasn't a character assassination on anyone, least of all Laird Doctor. It was a statement on the ridiculous state of liability law that makes some of our nation's lawyers run toward every aviation accident, palms outstreched.

If you remember, the implication of the early poster was that the NTSB found EAA and Pardue partially liable. That impression needed to be corrected.

What happened to Laird Doctor is unfortunate. I was at Oshkosh that year, and I saw the accident. We all only learned later that he had irreperable injuries, and that is tragic.

None of this discussion, however, stops our runaway court system from ignoring what is right for what makes people feel better.

[stuntflyr]

Randy,
If you run into the back of your leaders head, could he have avoided it?
Chris...

[MarkB]

killing all the lawyers (Again)

It's not the lawyers. It's not the judges. It's not the legal system, which is still far and away the best in the world. . . .

It's the Jurys. The lawyers don't award money, the jurys do.

The next time you rail against the those damn personal injury lawyers and how they're making your insurance rates go up, stop for a minute and think about how many times you've tried to get out of jury duty, ignored the summons, or lied so you wouldn't get chosen. Every time someone educated (by schooling or experience) leaves the job of juror to those less- qualified, they have no one to blame but themselves.

This is not an attack on anyone, but the remark about how the jury felt sympathy and was looking to get some insurance money to the Doctors' may be right. But we'll never know howmany people who would not have fallen in to that trap dodged jury duty "cause they didn't have time".


Sorry Wayne, just a pet peeve of mine . . .

[stuntflyr]

Good point about the jury pool.
Chris...

[RandyGoss75]

Doctor Accident

A lot of really good points actually...........

One thing I have not heard kicked around much in this debate, is the lack of response from the tower.......

I realize that each PIC is responsible for the safety of his flight...

Why did the tower not tell the Corsair flight to abort take off when the Bearcat flight was running up on the active???

Tragic accident.....For Lad and Linda, Howard, the EAA and everyone else that was found responsible....to whatever degree, for whatever reason.


All the best, Randy Goss

[stuntflyr]

Randy and Randy,

I have been dinged for writing about airplane judgement calls in and out of the cockpit on these forums but I can't resist the need to say a couple things.

I'm sorry Lad got hurt.

That said, here are a few things that seem to need said. I have screwed up flying airplanes and I have been lucky and never been hurt. I have screwed up in formation flying and been lucky again and not hurt anyone else. I learned and tried to apply what I learned into a body of knowledge formed to be my internal quick reference checklist. The ones like "land straight ahead, don't turn back", and that kind of stuff.

In the case of the Corsairs TO in to the Bearcats, I could only think that Lad did not have the leader in sight. I can't head down a runway I haven't looked down first. Can't do it. In a tail dragger with a long nose I guess you would have to point the airplane off to the right and park so you could see the airplanes in front of you. It is the ONLY way to sure.

Randy Haskin, I respectfully submit that we are not fighting for humanity at Oshkosh. Rockets, guns and bombs are all replica, but the chute, the physics and judgement remain the same. Frank Sanders used to brief airshows that I attended and the most of what I remember is our main job was to survive. He often wrote it in big letters on a chalk board and told us not to do risky, dumb things. You know how insidious the dumb, killer things can be.

Randy Goss, I hope we get to race someday. You no doubt have seen the Biplane and F-1 launch technique now that using the ramp is DANGEROUS. 3 rows of airplanes, 3,2,3 launched simultaneously in F-1 and in quick succession in Biplane. I set my airplane up so I can see the airplane ahead. Otherwise how can I maintain visual on the guy I'm flying on? I angle my ship or offset it, but when I'm strapped in it ,I'm able to see the airplane in front of me.

As for a radio message from the controller saving the day, I cannot ever think of this being viable. There are too many variables. Here is an example at an airshow of the radio messing up the deal, and the pilot saving it because he was looking out the window.

A Spitfire is landing and slowly approaching an intersection where an airshow performer is to start his show TO from. As the Spitfire rolls out someone gets on the freq in use and shouts a rousing cheer to the airshow performer, " Go Joe,Go!!". So the performer thinks this is from the Spitfire pilot telling him to go, and he darts out in front of the hapless Spitfire pilot, who jumps all over the controls to miss the encroaching airplane, and then recover control after I'm sure, getting it all out of shape! All turned out OK and it was sorted out in the debrief, but had the Spitfire guy not seen the other guy make his move, there would have been a collision. Oh, and the Spitfire pilot never heard the rousing cheer, so had no warning.

If the tower at Oshkosh had been asked by the Corsairs,"Hey where are those Bearcats?", and the tower said " there a third down the runway" does that mean they are under power, or parked? If the tower said " hey Corsairs those Bearcats are parked, abort!" it might have been heard, or not, or might have been too late. The radio can't save us.

The end of this is our personal responsibility for what we do in the cockpit, and if I am not seeing my leader, I am going about a manuveur to make space, and then re-acquire him. The show will go on without my perfect spacing, and if I see him a mile and a half away pulling a smoke trail? Oh well, at least I can say, "Hey gimme a couple"...

Take Care,
Chris...