Red Bull plane swap stunt.

Searched but didn't see a thread onthis. 

Did anyone hear about the Red Bull plane swap stunt last month?  Pilots in two planes jumped out, sky dove to the opposite plan, got in and landed, or that was the plan.  One of them was successful, the other had to bail out, literally, and parachute to safety while the plane went on to crash in the Arizona desert.  Now it turns out that the FAA had denied the pilots permission to do the stunt, and have now rescinded both pilots licenses.  Good.  We may live in an overly regulated era, but FFS, how stupid do you need to be to do a dangerous stunt after being told by the regulating authority not too.  No sympathy for the pilots, they've probably lost their livelihoods now, but good, they should be made an example of.  I love what Red Bull do for motorsports and their aerial stuff, but this just seemed to be pushing stupid too far.  

They shouldn't have had parachutes on. Redbull is supposed to give you wings. 

So soon after that youtube "star" bailed out of a plane for it to crash into the mountains? Ballsy.

In reply to ArtemVolf :

Can you gamble on canoe races?

iansane said:

So soon after that youtube "star" bailed out of a plane for it to crash into the mountains? Ballsy.

Damn, I'd missed that one.  Went looking after your post and found it.  Idiot covered the plane with GoPro's, engine happens to stop, he happens to be wearing a parachute, so jumps out with a selfie stick, films it as it crashes.  Goes recoveres the Go Pro's but claims he always wears a parachute and it wasn't intentional.  Even though there are many other of his video's in that plane with no parachute etc.

I actually hope these people get prosecuted by the Police for reckless endangerment or something.  Just because it's a remote area doesn't mean there aren't people hiking, camping, wildlife etc.  This stupidity of endangering others for views and clicks needs to be stopped.

Pity Darwin has been napping lately, the dude is 213 years old, so I guess we can forgive him being off duty from time to time.

Waste of a perfectly good 172.

If they had used a smaller lighter plane, they could have put ballistic chutes on the planes to recover them if they F'd up.

I really hope the idiot who crashed his plane is not going to make an insurance claim!

Sometimes "extreme" is extreme.  Many times it's just stupid.

It was in all the news, so yes I heard about it.  However, I didn't see a picture of the crashed plane before now - I'm impressed with how it darted straight down into the ground and still remained mostly intact.

stuart in mn said:

It was in all the news, so yes I heard about it.  However, I didn't see a picture of the crashed plane before now - I'm impressed with how it darted straight down into the ground and still remained mostly intact.

I would imagine Red Bull would not want those pictures released. The company logo on a recklessly crashed plane is a nightmare for the PR Department.

Did Red Bull secure the ground? If so, then it's both over-regulation and on the pilots who chose to piss of the agency. If not, then that's entirely on Red Bull and the pilots.

In reply to Error404 :

While the photos showed the planes in a dive, planes can fly with an unconscious pilot until they run out of fuel.  Even with a lightly fueled 182, that could be hundreds and hundreds of miles.  So, if they secured totally uninstructed use of the whole state of Arizona, I might, just might agree with you, but on reflection no, no I wouldn't.

Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Error404 :

While the photos showed the planes in a dive, planes can fly with an unconscious pilot until they run out of fuel.  Even with a lightly fueled 182, that could be hundreds and hundreds of miles.  So, if they secured totally uninstructed use of the whole state of Arizona, I might, just might agree with you, but on reflection no, no I wouldn't.

Not defending the offenders, but the large speed brakes under the fuselage ensured the planes would stay in a vertical dive.  The net effect will probably be bigger stunts in the coming months and years.  General aviation is a growing segment on Youtube and the viewers have a pretty spendy demographic.  This won't be the worst airplane "fail" stunt produced this year.

Cool stunt, but they shouldn't have done in the US without the FAAs waiver in place. They were told 'no' and did it anyway, now the consequences are on them.

Heck, that plane isn't too bad, it should pound out. It would have been just as impressive if they had had a second pilot in each plane just in case the exact thing that happened did. Didn't the Red Bull heir also do a stupid stunt?

Daily Beast: A Red Bull Heir Who Killed Cop With Ferrari While Drunk Is Now Free to Return to Thailand

Stupid human tricks.

The pilots should legally lose their licenses, they knew exactly the consequences they were risking and did it anyway, without permission, in full view of the public and for profit, and Red Bull was publicly in on it, which seems like something out of a cyberpunk novel already.

Ethically did the pilots do a bad thing? I would say not. They did this over an empty desert and didn't put anyone else at risk. The worst thing that came out of this was a waste of a plane, all they were risking was 2 small planes and the lives of the 2 pilots who knew what they were getting into. It's a stunt that the pilots had been planning for many years. Really I think Red Bull deserves more punishment than the pilots in this case, for sponsoring and enabling an illegal stunt for profit.

Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Error404 :

While the photos showed the planes in a dive, planes can fly with an unconscious pilot until they run out of fuel.  Even with a lightly fueled 182, that could be hundreds and hundreds of miles.  So, if they secured totally uninstructed use of the whole state of Arizona, I might, just might agree with you, but on reflection no, no I wouldn't.

The planes had the throttle and mixture pulled so that the engines would not fire before the pilots jumped out, so they weren't going any further than gravity or wind could take them.

(plus the giant air brakes that were out would further limit their range if they stayed deployed).

GameboyRMH said:

Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Error404 :

While the photos showed the planes in a dive, planes can fly with an unconscious pilot until they run out of fuel.  Even with a lightly fueled 182, that could be hundreds and hundreds of miles.  So, if they secured totally uninstructed use of the whole state of Arizona, I might, just might agree with you, but on reflection no, no I wouldn't.

The planes had the throttle and mixture pulled so that the engines would not fire before the pilots jumped out, so they weren't going any further than gravity or wind could take them.

(plus the giant air brakes that were out would further limit their range if they stayed deployed).

Additionally, skydivers generally go straight down, not glide at slopes that planes can. If the planes had been trimmed to glide, then the pilots/skydivers would have been way off target once they exited the cockpits... Setting the planes into a dive with air-brakes was the only way the pilots had any chance of staying near the planes.

Yeah I'm in the camp where the only thing really wrong that the pilots did was put the finger to the FAA. Even that is questionable. But still. Bad plan for corporate sponsors. Loss of license and hefty fine seems appropriate, for sponsors and pilots. 
Stupid? Absolutely. 
Reckless endangerment? No. 

And the point is....

I am supposed to go out and buy a Red Bull, which costs more than Coke and comes in smaller cans, because I saw a dangerous plane trick on YouTube?

Do they think that most humans are stupid?

...and I tried a Red Bull once, once.

In reply to Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) :

Advertising is as much about brand awareness as it is about getting you to search for that product.  It works by you looking for a 'cola', or an 'energy drink'.  Then you can choose coke or Pepsi, Red Bull or Monster etc.  You grab that one that you know the best, hae heard of, you have some emotional link too.  It's more about driving the final decision than the general category.  

They don't think humans are that stupid.  They've been studying human reaction to adverts and promotional schemes for well over a century so yes, they know exactly what they are doing, and they know it works.  

aircooled said:

If they had used a smaller lighter plane, they could have put ballistic chutes on the planes to recover them if they F'd up.

It had a chute.  There's a picture of it deployed here: https://flyer.co.uk/red-bull-plane-swap-in-a-spin/    I think the problem was that it kept a nose-down attitude.   The planes still descend very fast under chute and depend on the landing gear to soften the blow.

^ I don't think the landing gear could do any meaningful work in absorbing the same amount of energy that it would take to shove the engine and dash completely into the plane's cabin.

Ballistic shoots are not to save the plane.  They are so the occupants can survive.  The SR22 below has seats mounted basically on shocks so that when the airframe hits the ground, the seats adsorb more energy.  Even then the passengers experience not insignificant G, I seem to recall 2+ up through their asses and spine.  The airframe is automatically written off with any parachute deployment.  You're probably going to need chiropractic care after 'landing' but hey, it's better then self burial at terminal velocity.

Adrian_Thompson (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) :

Advertising is as much about brand awareness as it is about getting you to search for that product.  It works by you looking for a 'cola', or an 'energy drink'.  Then you can choose coke or Pepsi, Red Bull or Monster etc.  You grab that one that you know the best, hae heard of, you have some emotional link too.  It's more about driving the final decision than the general category.  

They don't think humans are that stupid.  They've been studying human reaction to adverts and promotional schemes for well over a century so yes, they know exactly what they are doing, and they know it works.  

Monster still gives you twice as much juice in a bigger can for the same price while Red Bull gets rich selling those tiny cans.

Shasta Cola is half the price of either one of them. Maybe more of us humans should stop being stupid and figure it out.

I know what brand awareness is. Mrs. Snowdoggie is a Creative Director for an ad agency. She has actually designed cans for energy drinks in the past. She also buys generic products and does a lot of her shopping at Dollar Tree. She never buys the expensive stuff. When I was in college I worked summers at a cannery in Central California. I remember how they shut down the line to change the labels from Premium Brand to Generic, then to another store brand and so on. They never changed the fruit coming down the line. It still came from the same trucks coming from the same orchards. Don't ask me about the rats coming off the trucks. You don't want to know.

Humans are so gullible.