Air show crash highlights risks taken by pilots, as many safety precautions focus on spectators
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) – A deadly collision between two planes at the Wings Over Dallas air show Saturday highlights the inherent risk at air shows.
"As an industry, we are heartsick about the tragedy in Dallas," said John Cudahy, president of the International Council of Air Shows.
Extraordinary steps, he says, are taken to mitigate the risk at performances. Many of those precautions, though, are focused on protecting spectators.
Around the world, the highest death counts at air shows have come from planes crashing into crowds. The worst tragedy occurred in Ukraine in 2002, killing 77 people.
Here in the United States, situations like that have been incredibly rare.
"There has not been a spectator fatality at a US air show since 1951, more than seventy years," said Cudahy.
The FAA has special provisions for air shows prompted in great part by a 1951 accident at a Colorado air show that killed 20 people, most of them children, and injured another 50.
The agency now requires planes keep a distance of at least 500 feet from spectator areas and stay even farther away, if they're a high speed jet. When performing tricks, they must be in their own dedicated airspace and are strictly prohibited from flying toward the crowd.
"If a plane is upside down and something horrific happens, we don't want the continued path of the airplane to fly into the crowd," said Cudahy.
Pilots knowingly accept some risk to themselves when they perform, but the industry as a whole has improved following a series of accidents in 2007.
"That sort of energized the business to create a chance in the culture of airshow safety," said Cudahy.
Air show deaths, he says, are down to an average of one and a half a years.
With six killed in Dallas Saturday, a federal investigation will look at what else can be done.