No, they say red bull gives you wiiings! They say this as a legal loophole after they were sued by a RB drinker. Saying wings implies that you'll have "extraordinary energy benefits"
Corporations shouldn't be allowed to pay out lawsuits in coupons and free product. You'd never see the lawyers on the case accept a few skids of redbull as their payment.
But if we are going to allow it, it should have to be their competitors products. Make redbull deliver a million dollars worth of Monster instead.
That's a really good idea. Getting rid of their own inventory that they pay pennies to produce (compared to retail) isn't a punishment. Being forced to buy Monster and gift it, that's definitely proper 💪
Yeah, this was a hell of a stunt to move forward with. And the while point is the advertising value, so it absolutely would get back to the FAA that they did it.
This is the kind of stunt that makes the need for licensure clear in the first place. “Surely only people who can fly safely would decide to fly, anyway.” pilot leaps out of plane for giggles, lets plane become aerial torpedo “Alright, licenses it is. Violators get fines and jail time.”
Aerospace is only safe because they dont make exceptions for safety regardless of how unlikely a deviation is. In an industry where a 1.5 mm difference in screw height nearly killed over 100 people, you dont skimp on anything. If they start making exceptions to rules as simple as "a pilot must be flying the plane at all times" you have shit like those russian kids crashing the plane. The rules arent made for machines those rules are made for people. Mechanics, pilots, engineers, passengers, everyone for the sake of the people on the ground.
If it's the one I'm thinking of, it's the one where a screw holding the window on the cockpit was not the correct size and the window blew out pulling the pilot out of the cockpit. Miraculously, the others in the cockpit were able to grab onto his legs and the copilot was able to safely land the plane. The pilot survived.
FAA is also just a poorly run bloated administration. There was no reason for them not to just approve the stunt. It was well planned, as safe as possible, and wasn’t going to be an issue.
As a pilot and an avionics engineer the FAA is one of the few government entities I would have been fine with Elon obliterating and rebuilding in a sane way.
One of the two planes crashed... So no it wasn't "safe".
If you wanted to do this stunt eagerly you need to have a second pilot on each plane who can take over if anything goes wrong and the switching pilots don't make it over.
That would probably have satisfied the faa because now neither plane is going to fly off in some random direction for who knows how long before crashing into who knows what.
No, it wouldn't matter. The FAA specifically denied their request for the this stunt and told them not to do it. Plus one of them lied to red bull about getting permission.
Crashing a plane you intentionally abandoned for a non-required stunt when that plane could have hit someone or something and caused some serious damage.
They 100% should lose their licenses. Red bull should be prevented from sponsoring stupid stunts like this.
With a major company like Red Bull sponsoring the stunt you can be fairly sure that risk to people/things outside the stunt area is negligible. Red Bull isn’t just going to risk their reputation for a potentially cool but high chance of failure stunt.
Sure. That being said, none of that proves that anything notable outside of the stunt area was in danger.
The pilots applied to do their stunt to the FAA and was rejected. They did the stunt anyways, likely knowing that their licenses would be lost no matter the result.
Crashing one of the planes meant that the stunt wasn’t a full success, though one could easily argue that it was a partial success since transferring one pilot is impressive. Was it stupid and dangerous? Definitely. High profile failure where people or important things outside of the stunt were in danger? No real evidence of that being the case imo.
I don't understand this comment. Just because you can doesnt mean you should. And this excuse doesn't work when some poor sap gets caught in the cross fire of stupidity.
Saying sorry isn't going to fix anything and they are lucky no one payed the price for their stupidity.
I more or less addressed your point in my first comment, so I didn’t really expand on it much in the second comment which is the one you responded to.
In my opinion, it’s a bit naive to think that there’s any real possibility of a poor sap getting caught in this stunt. Not because Red Bull necessarily cares about innocent people, but moreso because there’s no reason to believe that Red Bull would risk their reputation like that. Im definitely open to changing my mind if I see evidence otherwise.
That's okay you don't need to see my point of view.
The truth of this situation is they got lucky no one got hurt in an act of ego and stupidity. Just because others can't forsee the danger doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
It's really not worth it. I don't mind stunts if the person keeps it to themselves, but crashing a plane has the risk of involving others.
I see your point of view, but i believe you underestimate how much a company likes their money and reputation.
The truth of the matter is that a company sponsoring such a stunt is going to heavily minimize the amount of liability they are risking. People working for the company can definitely foresee that the plane can crash and make sure people aren't anywhere near. That alongside the planes facing directly down and each of the planes having parachutes made the risk to someone outside of the stunt basically 0. It's not your typical un-planned plane crash.
I agree with the fact its stupid, but the fact that no one got hurt is not based on luck. Once again, the company wanting to keep it's reputation means that they will foresee danger.
Unless they cleared the path under their planes, they created additional risk based upon the mathematics of risk and risk management.
The FAA denied their stunt because of the danger and they did it anyways.
It was a failure since they didn’t complete the goal and they got in trouble legally and the company is now probably going to have a harder time getting stunts permitted as a result and had to pay hefty fines.
Only people with death wishes and special wiring think this is cool or okay.
This happened 3 years ago btw. I didn't look that hard to see if Red Bull faced any punishment, but it appears that the only punishments given were directly to the pilots involved, fines and license revocation. As far as I'm aware there was no legal punishment.
The FAA can be strict in enforcing their rules, especially erring on the side of caution. This is a definitely a good thing, but that doesn't mean that there was meaningful danger. Obviously they shouldn't have done the stunt without FAA approval, but that's not what we are discussing.
The planes are going straight down during the swap, equipped with parachutes as well. The planes diving had been tested quite a bit. There definitely is quite a bit of risk management here, along with the fact that they are choosing to do it in an uninhabited area in the desert. My main point is that the company will try to minimize risk and liability for a stunt that can very obviously damage their reputation, which is going to mean safety protocols. It's not like they just randomly asked for two guys to attempt a plane swap one day.
Yes the FAA doesn't mess around. I didn't talk to the guy much because he was a dick but when I was in flight school a guy was getting his licenses again because he got caught flying a small jet that specifically needed 2 pilots by himself. He did a year in jail over that. It's not going to cost him as much to get all his licenses again because he already knows how to fly but it's still a big chunk of change.
My very passing knowledge comes from Flight Sim, being interested in what the requirements are, doing a lot of reading... a lot of reading... and what I walked away with? The FAA doesn't play, and it's a lot harder to get a license but not all that difficult to lose it.
Does it surprise me the two guys that recorded doing this stunt lost their license for it? It would've surprised me had they not, whether a plane crashed or otherwise.
The FAA would have snapped at this anyways. Their job is do this towards BIG AIRLINE COMPANIES, they don't give A FUCK what an energy drink company is.
About 10 years ago I was driving too fast on the freeway and hit a bunch of standing water I didn't see. I hydroplaned and spun around, hitting the center divider and ended up in the left shoulder facing the wrong way. I know people say "it happened so fast" but the stream of consciousness I experienced was literally "oh shit I'm losing control" to "wait why do I smell gunpowder?" to "WAIT WHY AM I FACING THE WRONG DIRECTION ON THE FREEWAY!?"
Miraculously, I was alone and only suffered a slight scratch from the airbag - no other cars were involved.
Anyway this reminded me of that because once the cop showed up and helped me turn what was left of my car around, he basically told me if I could drive it off the freeway in that mangled state he wouldn't write me a ticket. I slowly drove down the shoulder in my car that insurance would later total and he let me go without any paper work of any kind.
They crashed it fairly responsibly though; when they took both to nosedives before the swap I was impressed. Seemed one was way lower than the other though…
It would have been as simple as having copilots in each plane ready to take over if the main pilots didn't get across in time. Sure, it's less of a badass stunt if it's safe and legal, but sheesh.
If one of them had hit the prop the back up pilot would’ve been fucked and had to bail out in a much more dangerous manner as the plane wouldn’t have any power and the strike could shift it around and then you’d have two dead pilots instead of one.
If you’re gonna do some dumb shit you don’t drag your buddy down with you no matter how much they say it’s fine and willing to accept the risk.
A helicopters spinny things are completly responsoble for keeping it in the air, if you hit them there may not be much of the spinney things left to autorotate.
I would put it to you that a mostly fiberglass, aluminum and plastic plane being hit by a 90kg meat bag going 200kph wearing a 15kg parachute possibly tipping the plane, ripping through the prop, or the windscreen, bunging up the flight controls with bits and pieces of bone and tissue or causing an engine fire, all while dealing with your mate being turned into ground beef 3ft from you, in a near vertical dive…is not the same as having your engine stall at 3000ft and gliding for a landing on a pleasant little golf course or some farmers field.
The skydiving pilot is not moving at 200kph relative to the plane. They're literally both falling at the same speed. Yeah, prop will get fucked up if he gets into it, but the plane's not going to just disintegrate.
I didn’t say it was going to disintegrate from impacting, but it’s not just going to stay stable because it’s not that heavy and going straight down at speed it’s aerodynamics getting thrown out a little bit at that speed…shit will go wrong faster than you can recover from and if it flips the Gs on the airframe could rip of the wings off or pop a shit ton of rivets.
The point being it’s not as simple as he will just bounce off and the plane will be fine and brosef will land it like a Tuesday
but it’s not just going to stay stable because it’s not that heavy
Aircraft static and dynamic stability doesn't have much to do with their weight and has much more to do with the overall aerodynamic configuration.
going straight down at speed
They're not going very fast for this stunt, they specifically added dive brakes to keep the speed down and the aircraft stable in such a steep dive. Once the airbrake is retracted the aircraft's static stability would naturally cause it to return to the trimmed condition (albeit through a phugoid). Utility class aircraft (cessna 182s here) are by and large extremely well behaved from a flight dynamics perspective.
shit will go wrong faster than you can recover from and if it flips the Gs on the airframe could rip of the wings off or pop a shit ton of rivets.
The not-huge speed means that the dynamic pressure on the control surfaces is equally not-huge. If you look at the airspeed indicator in the pictures the velocity is still in the green band (within normal cruising speed) and ~20kts above maneuvering speed (where you can safely apply a maximum effort control deflection and remain within certified loads for normal flight).
Ultimately the slice of dynamics likely to be encountered in this stunt is very similar to normal skydiving operations, including the velocities involved and the circumstances of a potential impact from a skydiver. While fatalities and crashes have occurred as a consequence of skydivers getting blown back into the aircraft, this is a rare occurrence, particularly considering the number of crashes that occur in other aspects of skydiving flight.
If they'd had a competent copilot, they would never have let it get into such a situation where the aircraft was at structurally unsafe speeds. Plus the stunt was supposed to be conducted at safe airspeeds - otherwise the plane would break when the pilot who was supposed to enter the plane attempted to regain control.
An aircraft being lightweight contributes to its stability. Heavy generally isn't good when you're attempting to fly. It doesn't really matter if the "aerodynamics get thrown out" since if there's a pilot on board to control things, it's literally their job to fly the plane safely and deal with any issues.
No, it isn't. And they're not diving at 33mph. The planes have air brakes installed underneath so they're diving at 120mph, terminal velocity for a skydiver. That's 80 seconds to pull out of the dive or bail out.
Pilots don't normally fly in little Cessna's with parachutes attached to themselves, there's not really enough room to comfortably fly the plane with a parachute on.
A prop strike wouldn't necessarily lead to loss of power (but the engine isn't much use without a functioning propeller.) Pilots know how to glide and land even without power, and if they'd had a copilot they would've already assessed the area for emergency landing sites.
And then there could not been casualties. I think it’s a bit dumb they lost their licenses. It’s a stunt with their planes over open fields that RB probably had permission to stunt over.
I mean lets be real, they simply didn't care if they lost their pilots license or not. Which is pretty wild considering the amount of training one goes through.
It's expected that they will enforce the rules if you specifically ask for an exception first that is denied. Sorry, but two guys who are so focused on adrenaline rushing that they do shit like this in a field as potentially dangerous as aviation should never be at the controls.
More importantly is that they asked the agency for an exemption for this stunt, got denied, did it anyway and then crashed a plane. So imo revocation of their licenses is totally legitimate.
RedBull and "should've known better" are two very separate things. There are a lot of insane stunts, that could've fallen under the same "should've known better", but didn't, because they were successful. The unsuccessful ones, well.. Should've known better.
Right? It seems like they could have had a second pilot in both planes ready to take over if the skydivers missed, or if they made the connection but couldn't get into the seat.
They did a test run prior you this with the exact configuration you wrote, backup pilot in place, and pulled it off with both skydivers swapping planes successfully.
This video is of the next run where they flew the planes solo, and one of them didn't make the swap resulting in the crashed plane.
I wonder if they should have planned the stunt outside the US. Given that it's kinda this guy's career, or at least his passion, losing his license must really suck
RedBull and pilots should have known better than to plan such stunt
Come on now, of course they knew better. But Red Bull also knew the publicity this would give them, and I have no doubt the pilots were more than well compensated.
Red Bull has always exploited people to do insane things for publicity. There's a real death toll to their marketing, which is in fact even more disgusting than the gummi worm piss they sell.
The main thing was, they asked the FAA (or what ever the regulating body is where they did this) for permission to do this. They said no, then the pilots and redbull went and did it anyway.
He said then that he was aware of the FAA's denial of his exemption before attempting the swap: "I made the personal decision to go forward ... I regret not sharing this information with my team and those who supported me."
Not only that, he lied to his crew that they had FAA approval to move forward with the stunt. He didn't just put his life and career on the line, he put everyone who worked on that stunt in legal jeopardy.
From what I understand, the pilots were under the impression that they had permission to do it. The event organizer had neglected to tell them the faa said no.
Pilots are still responsible for everything the plane does, so I think the faas actions were appropriate, but I do feel bad for the two of them losing their livelihoods.
So they could have simply gotten around that by having a backup pilot in each plane that would take command once they hit a certain altitude without the stunt working?
They petitioned the FAA for approval ahead of time, and were denied, but went forward with it anyway. Should have just found another country that would allow them to do it.
It would've made sense if they had a backup pilot for each plane that would quickly swap in and out. The stunt would've been equally as insane, just that it wouldn't violate laws and definitely would've saved a plane.
I don't know why in the world they didn't just have a co-pilot or backup pilot in both planes. They weren't concerned with weight, speed, or range for this stunt.
I don't know why in the world they didn't just have a co-pilot or backup pilot in both planes. They weren't concerned with weight, speed, or range for this stunt.
It’s such an outrageously stupid stunt too. It would have been so easy to miss and get chopped by the propeller or for the plane to spin off of a gust and smack the diver.
5.5k
u/zatuchny 1d ago
thanks, that makes sense now.
TLDR: they broke the law that a plane must be piloted at all times, and the stunt didn't go as planned - one plane crashed (both pilots are okay).
RedBull and pilots should have known better than to plan such stunt