NTSB says warbird airshow collision reflects poor planning

The collision occurred as a group of eight vintage military aircraft including fighters and bombers flew parade laps in front of spectators. The group of aircraft had completed a pass from right to left and was setting up for another pass in the opposite direction. Just prior to the accident, the ground-based air boss who was directing the aircraft by radio called for the fighter pilots to fly ahead of the B–17G and cross in front of it, moving from the bomber’s left side to its right.

The first two fighters in trail formation completed the repositioning maneuver. As the P–63F, which followed the first two fighters, performed a descending left banked turn toward the show line, it struck the left side of the B-17G near the trailing edge of the left wing, the NTSB said in its report. Both aircraft broke apart and fell to the ground. The crash killed all five people aboard the B–17G and the single pilot of the P–63F. No one on the ground, nor anyone aboard the other performing aircraft, was injured.

After conducting a simulation study of the crash, the NTSB “determined that the accident pilots had limited ability to see and avoid each other’s airplane due to flight path geometry and out-the-window view obscuration by aircraft structures.”

According to the NTSB, some pilots of other aircraft performing in the show told the agency during interviews that they were “confused by the air boss’s long stream of instructions.”  The NTSB also said the airshow industry lacks standardized terms when communicating with pilots and called the air boss’s deconfliction strategy “ineffective.”

The NTSB also said the FAA and the International Council of Air Shows “had not adequately considered the need to better mitigate the collision risks associated with performances involving multiple dissimilar aircraft.”

Investigators determined the probable cause of the accident was the airshow’s lack of a prebriefed aircraft separation plan and its reliance instead on the air boss’s “real-time deconfliction directives and the see-end-avoid strategy for collision avoidance, which allowed for the loss of separation between the Boeing B-17G and the Bell P-63F airplanes.”

Among the NTSB’s recommendations to the FAA, the ICAS, and the CAF were the establishment of standard operating procedures for airshow organizers and air bosses, performing risk assessments for each performance, and requiring recurrent air boss evaluations.