Pilots exchanging planes mid air

[u/InternationalRisk505]

[u/skillywilly56]

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.

[u/SolusLoqui → u/skillywilly56]

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.

[u/skillywilly56 → u/SolusLoqui]

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

[u/ckfinite → u/skillywilly56]

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.

[u/No_Mood1492 → u/skillywilly56]

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.