"Mass casualty situation" at air race crash in Reno

A couple of thoughts:

• IMHO, the age question isn't entirely out of line. At 500mph, that close to the deck — not to mention a crowd — the importance of reflexes and reaction time jumps about ten-fold. At 74 (his real age, despite earlier reports he was 80), those attributes are not optimum.
• Claims that the pilot's a hero because he steered away from the crowd are wishful thinking. He may have, he may not have — but there is simply no way to know what was going on in that cockpit or with the aircraft to say one way or the other.
• I wonder if we'll ever have a definitive answer. No black box on this kind of aircraft, and the thing damned near vaporized on impact. I've read that someone speculated part of the aircraft's stabilizing plane fell off before the crash. That may be the only verifiable cause, since it would have landed away from the impact zone. Other than that... good luck, NTSB.

 

... and...
• There's a pic of some chick on the Reno newspaper's website holding up a "piece of the wreckage" that she says landed next to her purse. She should be prosecuted to the fullest of the law for taking her little souvenir with her. That's evidence at a crash site. It may hold the answer to why the plane crashed, but Ms. Trailer Park 2005 is there, holding it up for cameras. Disgusting.

 

It's been bothering me, and it doesn't make a big difference, but the max speed of a P51 is about 450.

 

Leeward, on his website, lists the Ghost's top speed at 550 mph. Either way, it's friggin' fast.

 

Death toll now at 9.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/us/reno-air-show-crash.html?hp

 

It was a question, not a conclusion.

 

These are heavily modified...for instance, Pro Stock drag racing features Chevy Cobalts. They can hit 220 mph.

 

She could have handed it to an investigator before she left, thereby giving them one less thing to look for. This really isn't like a homicide scene, where you aren't allowed to move anything. Not with eleventy billion pieces of "evidence."

 

Airplanes racing one another at over 500 mph for shits & giggles over grandstands filled with thousands of people. What could go wrong?

 

Eighty-year-old guy flying a 70-year-old plane. No cause for worry there.