Observe this YouTube video of a Caravan.
Now, observe this low pass.
Let’s talk accelerated stall. All pilots should know what accelerated stalls are and commercial pilots should be WELL aware. However, as you can see it is a very fine line between yahoo and disaster.
Please, you are a professional pilot. Passing a wing within mere feet of someone’s head is just not cool. You don’t know what they’re going to do. And if anyone wants to point out that the King Air crash was not a jump plane I give you this report:
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We’ve talked about this Caravan low pass a lot, but has anyone asked the pilot to step up and provide his input?
Because there is no correct response to, “Hey, pilot. Why did you willfully and purposely violate the regs to do something careless and reckless? You risked your license, your life, and the lives of others.”
I think what Bill is getting at is was this a pass over a field that the pilot thought was empty of people? It was low light as you can see. However, I bet that was unlikely.
What is an accelerated stall?
Pilots should know that a wing will stall at the same ANGLE OF ATTACK (called critical angle of attack) regardless of the attitude to the horizon. As an aircraft banks it must increase angle of attack in order to maintain altitude. A heavier aircraft will reach that critical angle of attack before a lightly loaded aircraft. The King Air 200 crash video and the Marine City, MI report both were heavier loaded aircraft. But the margin of error was very little between this Caravan and disaster.
As for the people nearly cut in two? You can see what looks like the photographer’s foot coming up as he dodges the wing at the last second. They were extremely luck.