Making of a Sukhoi Su-30 Flanker
Posted on 08/30/2009 12:32:08 PM PDT by lizol
Two Belarussian pilots killed at Polish air show
Sun Aug 30, 2009 8:30pm IST
RADOM, Poland (Reuters) - Two Belarussian Air Force pilots were killed on Sunday when their SU-27 fighter plane crashed during an aerial acrobatics display at an air show in central Poland, police said.
"The two pilots did not manage to catapult to safety and were killed in the crash but there were no other casualties," police spokeswoman Agnieszka Humelusz in Radom, a city about 100 km (62 miles) south of Warsaw, told Reuters.
Witness Leszek Kopec told Reuters by telephone: "The SU-27 crashed far beyond the spectator area minutes after begining its aerial performance."
Poland's news channels showed the large, heavy plane making three aerial revolutions and then levelling off as if about to land. It then disappeared from sight beyond a line of trees and exploded, sending up billows of thick, black smoke.
"The plane crashed about 100 metres (yards) from buildings in the village of Naleczyn on the outskirts of Radom," TVN24 said.
Two pilots from Poland's Zelazny Aerial Acrobatics Group were killed at the 2007 Radom show when their planes collided in midair during a performance.
(Excerpt) Read more at in.reuters.com ...
Damn. Prayers for the pilots and their loved ones.
Bummer....
The rugged durability of Russian small arms is famous in the west, but most do not know that the lifetime of their aircraft are substantially below most western models —the airframes can withstand a much lower number of hours, annually.
I don’t know that that was a factor here, however.
Looks like controlled flight into terrain.
Can an aviation expert tell me at about what point in the video were they in big trouble? 50 seconds into the video or so?
Russian engineering is almost exclusively limited to their small arms. If its more complicated than an AK, expect it to fail. Period.
Wasn’t their another similar crash awhile ago at the Polish Air Show?
Ping!
Looks like during the stall at the 50 second mark, they were unable to recover for some reason and just fell flat into the ground.
Making of a Sukhoi Su-30 Flanker
They were in trouble at :55 into this (or a little sooner). They appeared to realize this (that they had insufficient altitude to recover from the loop) at :59 when they pulled the nose up hard putting the jet into a full stall with a subsequent crash. Their rate of descent at the point where thy pulled the nose up was probably to high to afford a safe ejection (out of the safe envelope).
This didn't look like equipment failure.
Most likely 100% pilot error unless they had engine failure coming out of the overhead maneuver. If the engines had failed, the pilots would likely have initiated an ejection prior to putting the aircraft into a full stall.
Not true, the Russians have some fine engineering, it is manufacturing that they aren’t all that great at. That is why they usually design their things to be ugly but tough (AK-47, Soyuz). Besides, this looked like a piloting error.
Sorry wrong link
Su-30MKI crash at Paris Air Show Le Bourget 1999
99,959 views
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .
Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
— John Gillespie Magee, Jr
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