A Snowbird went down today north of Vancouver.

Anyone know anymore details?

One person dead.  Looks like the ejection didn't go well.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/canada-snowbirds-team-jet-crashes-in-british-columbia-report-says-one-crew-member-dead/ar-BB14dbio?li=BBnbfcL&ocid=mailsignout

PA officer was killed

Yea, thats kinda rough to watch. RIP to the fallen.

Dupe.

https://www.ar15.com/forums/general/Canadian-Snowbird-crashed-at-Kamloops-Airport-BC-pilot-ejected-and-landed-on-house/5-2329144/

Knock it off.

There literally are no dupes in here. Some of us fucking hate GD.

Damn, I hate this.  RIP Capt Casey



This!

Any early thoughts as to what happened?

engine failure, tried to trade speed for altitude for the impossible turn back to airport or avoid populated area and then stalled and they ejected.

Based on what I see and have read, it appears to be some kind of compressor stalls, stagnation, or engine failure.  Pretty much every single-engine, ejection seat equipped aircraft have the same emergency procedure for a low altitude engine failure...trade any excess airspeed for altitude, prepare for ejection and punch out before a sink rate develops.  As evidenced by the zoom climb they executed, it looks like this is exactly what they were trying to do. For one reason or another they didn't get out before the sink rate.  For an ejection seat of that caliber, ejecting with that type of sink rate is a very risky proposition.

The turn back to the airport didn’t help. He must have thought he could make it. I don’t know how much altitude that aircraft needs to make the turn back. But this pilot was a Snowbird and therefore highly accomplished.  He could also have been trying to limit ground casualties, which is commendable.

GA pilots have been debating the “impossible turn” probably since the first paved runway. Some claim they can do it but the videos I have seen were guys demonstrating a sub-1,000’ RTB in a Carbon Cub or something like that. Let me see that in an Arrow (we all know the Arrow glide rate jokes).  It is certainly something that I have spent a lot of time thinking about and planning for. I need to get up to altitude and practice power off again.

It has to take a huge amount of discipline to see the runway (or even the airport environment) over your shoulder and not exceed your turn rate when the nose is pointed at a suburban neighborhood.  If I bank a few more degrees and pull back just a bit more on the yoke....

Tailwinds to the passenger and best wishes for the pilot’s recovery.  

@Mach

Wanted to bring this over to the aviation side and ask what you did to recover the F15.  Or did the aircraft sort itself out?  I can imagine a spin recovery in an F15 is much more involved than in a 172.

Not really.

For an inverted spin it was out of AB, smoothly neutralize the controls and wait.

I waited hanging in the straps. It stopped spinning, rolled wings level and upright, then the tail went underneath the nose and started an inverted spin again.

It did that 3 times in 24,000 feet of drop.

Going through 10,000 feet over water ( min uncontrolled ejection altitude at the time ) inverted, it did it again and I decide to stay with it and try something different, this time when it stopped spinning and rolled wings level I pushed the stick full forward and went full afterburner, there was a pause where it did nothing and then the nose went nose over to 145 degrees inverted, I was able to get some airspeed roll wings up and pull bottoming out 1500 feet over the ocean.

Fun times

All that in about what, 3-4 minutes?  I don’t know the rate of descent for an inverted F-15 in a spin, but I’ll bet you do!

Great job and I am glad that it worked out for you.

Easy to armchair these things so take my opinion for what its worth, which is not much as I haven't flown a jet... but their chances of survival would have been a lot better if they'd pushed over at the top of that climb(before airspeed decayed too badly) and punched.

Really lost a TON of momentum, airplane stalled/spun and was headed in when they ejected.  

If you have a means to eject, I take that any day over trying to get any airplane back to the runway.

RIP to the pilot and prayers to the family.

The best place to initiate ejection with those seats is wings level in any vector other than down. As soon as you are descending, it dramatically reduces the capability of the seat, and at the altitudes they were at they were probably out of the ejection envelope the second they were headed downhill.

The decision to eject is a tough one, and goes against the instincts of nearly every pilot.  The #1 reason for unsuccessful ejections is a "delayed decision to eject" because that desire to not leave the aircraft is so strong.

Former Snow Birds pilot gives some thoughts to the crash sequence

All of this!

Looks like he zoomed after an engine problem, stalled the plane, and ejected too slow/low for the seat.  If so, the cause will be "Ejection outside of the seat envelope" with maybe a contributing factor similar to "pilot stalled aircraft while preoccupied with engine trouble".  

Don't know the first thing about those planes but they weren't going very fast past the camera and were pretty low, whatever altitude there was to be gained in the zoom was very little.  Google says the plane stalls about 70kts and the seat is good above 90kts.  That 90kts presumably assumes the aircraft is level with no descent rate.  

Old seats are scary!  Many modern seats can be safe at low airplane altitudes even when inverted or with very high vertical speeds.

Was browsing videos about ejection seats and stumbled upon this very informative video.