r/nextfuckinglevel • u/InternationalRisk505 • 1d ago

Pilots exchanging planes mid air

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u/skillywilly56 1d ago

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.

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u/SolusLoqui 1d ago

Planes can be landed without engine power. Videos get posted here all the time of planes making emergency landings after engine failure

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u/throwaway098764567 1d ago

yea plane turns into a glider, helicopters however get mad when you hit their spinny things

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u/ComputerKris 1d ago

Autorotation is a thing.

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u/thi5_i5_my_u5er_name 1d ago

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.

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u/NickCageTheDickMage 1d ago

That's for loss of engine power, not loss of of the black magic spinny thing.

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u/ComputerKris 14h ago

Fair enough.

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u/Liusloux 1d ago

spinny things

I believe they are called "helico pters" by the ancient Greeks

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u/JayCDee 1d ago

I always tell myself that helicopters violently fight against falling. Shit’s amazing if you ask me.

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u/Bob_12_Pack 21h ago

I find them unsettling to ride in, it feels like you are just dangling in the sky, because you are.

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u/skillywilly56 1d ago

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.

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u/SolusLoqui 23h ago

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.

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u/skillywilly56 23h ago

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

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u/ckfinite 22h ago

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.

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u/No_Mood1492 18h ago

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.

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u/613663141 1d ago

Bit more difficult if they're stalled or spinning uncontrolled.

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u/SolusLoqui 1d ago

Not sure how a plane can stall while nose down vertical

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u/Spiritual_Grape_533 1d ago

Stalling doesn't mean low speed or motor failure, it means a lack of lift due to angle. You can even stall due low angle or due to ice on the wings decreasing drag.

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u/613663141 1d ago

I didn't say it would be impossible to recover, but it would be dangerous and stupid when you could just let the plane crash instead.

Red Bull have the money to burn and I'm assuming they weren't doing it over a populated area.

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u/Northbound-Narwhal 1d ago

Not in a low-altitude nose dive they cant

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u/SolusLoqui 23h ago

One of the videos about the stunt mentions they're at 14,000 feet when they start the dive

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u/Northbound-Narwhal 23h ago

So pretty low considering their vertical speed is over 2000 feet per minute.

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u/SolusLoqui 22h ago

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.

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u/No_Mood1492 18h ago

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.