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Comment by coldcode | Hacker News Reader

A friend of mine in the 90s was there as an F-16 test pilot and saw the accident. He said this sort of problem is a well known risk of being a test pilot so they spend a lot of time on planning how to deal with something bad. He also said they usually left much more daring things to safer places and preferred to keep the air show maneuvers less risky since crashes are not a good marketing plan.

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> He also said they usually left much more daring things to safer places and preferred to keep the air show maneuvers less risky since crashes are not a good marketing plan.

Makes sense. Fancy maneuvers at lower altitudes (i.e. Air shows/Public/govt Demos) give less space to correct or safely eject when something goes wrong.

My first flight instructor, an accomplished aerobatics competitor and air-show performer, had a saying: "Make the difficult look easy, the easy look spectacular, and never attempt the impossible."

Since the cause was multiple birdstrikes, I don't know how specific to being a test pilot this episode was. Maybe they do more stuff with higher risk of birdstrike in general, or maybe they didn't yet know the plane's flight envelope, etc., but this would have been a bad day even if the MiG was production at this point, i would think.

edit: I guess this plane was already production at this point. maybe i'm confused about what constitutes a test pilot.

Civilian aircraft are speed limited below IIRC 18,000' because of the danger of bird strikes. Military aircraft are no less vulnerable, they just have ejection seats if the pilot loses the game with the birds.

My friend flew every plane they delivered, sort of a functional test, in addition to practicing/planning for airshows, as well as sometimes showing off for employees at lunchtime.

> crashes are not a good marketing plan

NASCAR disagrees.

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