Luke Aikins planning new stunt.

[JoeWeber 2,667]

9 hours ago, billvon said:

Now come on.  At some point both incidents will make it to the Museum Committee and they will look at the issues long and hard before they decide whether to put them in the museum or not.

Could be. On the other hand you really have to shout out Ed Scott who was first to theorize that fewer USPA Officials would result in fewer embarrassments for USPA Members. 

[JoeWeber 2,667]

On 4/28/2022 at 12:39 PM, JerryBaumchen said:

Hi Rich,

It probably depends on whether or not that person is a member of the BOD.

Jerry Baumchen

Circling back to your earlier observations, it now seems apparent that there is a difference between home schooling and university when it comes to engineering. 

[JoeWeber 2,667]

7 hours ago, yoink said:

Thanks Paul. He's got a great personality and obviously carries knowledge from both skydiving and GA, and that comes across brilliantly. 

 

I have no beef with Luke. In fact I don't even really know who he is. But I do have an issue with something @chuckakers said early on. Luke might be a meticulous engineer, and may well follow the letter of the law as Chuck states, but what's been proven here is that this project team, who Luke is the face of, followed the law right up to the point where they disagreed with it, and then broke the law anyway. 

 

For me, personally, that's an unforgivable level of arrogance.

 

Whether you agree with the FAA rules in general, or this particular ruling in specific, abiding by a set process and then deliberately breaking it when it doesn't go your way shows a lot about the character of the people involved. 

Under you can't make this shit up, in my Group Member feed USPA is offering a seminar in Crisis Management. I totally snorted tea on my keyboard seeing that.

[gowlerk 2,154]

1 hour ago, wolfriverjoe said:

Did he not start the approval process early enough to have 'wiggle room' for appeals if it was denied?
Did he just expect the approval to be rubber stamped because of who he is and what he's done in the past?

Or possibly there was a great amount of pressure put on the the project by the sponsors who had put up the money. Followed by the arrogance of assuming the event would come off successfully. I'm not sure if the FAA would be bothered to look at it if not for the crash in the desert. Who knows, but for sure proceeding after permission was denied is going to make his reputation for professionalism turn to dust.

[wolfriverjoe 1,495]

2 minutes ago, gowlerk said:

Or possibly there was a great amount of pressure put on the the project by the sponsors who had put up the money. Followed by the arrogance of assuming the event would come off successfully. I'm not sure if the FAA would be bothered to look at it if not for the crash in the desert. Who knows, but for sure proceeding after permission was denied is going to make his reputation for professionalism turn to dust.

Given that the FAA has gone after people who post videos of jumpers going through clouds, I'd bet that Luke would have gotten some attention no matter the outcome.

 

[gowlerk 2,154]

2 minutes ago, wolfriverjoe said:

Given that the FAA has gone after people who post videos of jumpers going through clouds, I'd bet that Luke would have gotten some attention no matter the outcome.

 

You may be right. Which really makes me wonder what the hell he was thinking.

[wolfriverjoe 1,495]

1 minute ago, gowlerk said:

You may be right. Which really makes me wonder what the hell he was thinking.

That's a very good question.

I'd love to hear an answer from him.

I have zero expectations of one, but I'd still love to hear it.

[JoeWeber 2,667]

59 minutes ago, gowlerk said:

You may be right. Which really makes me wonder what the hell he was thinking.

Maybe he was thinking, well, Mike got away scott free and Chuck thinks I'm brilliant and that it's a cool stunt and they always say go big or go home and if anyone at the FAA or anywhere else doesn't like it they can go screw themselves.

I was rooting for them to succeed. For certain they had more than enough talent to pull it off if they'd only done the airplane bit properly. However, blowing off the FAA is not forgivable. Blowing off the FAA while being a USPA official is both selfish and dumb. Whatever the FAA will do is beyond control. That said, Luke should resign immediately and, in the hope of regaining some lost credibility, he should depart with an official, scathing, rebuke from the USPA.

[JerryBaumchen 1,333]

3 hours ago, gowlerk said:

You may be right. Which really makes me wonder what the hell he was thinking.

Hi Ken,

IMO:

1.  The money

2.  The fame that would lead to the next 'event.'

Jerry Baumchen

PS)  For Luke to remain on the USPA BOD sullies any reputation USPA has.
 

[dudeman17 320]

9 hours ago, wolfriverjoe said:

The thing about it is there was virtually zero chance of the plane 'flying away'.
It was in a vertical dive over uninhabited desert...

The risk to 'persons or property on the surface' (I agree that it's a good rule) was VERY low.

 

Some video about this I saw on youtube had comments from a number of pilots, including a flight school, who regularly fly / were flying that day in the area and knew nothing about it. So apparently Luke didn't clear his airspace very well.

[pchapman 278]

57 minutes ago, dudeman17 said:

 

Some video about this I saw on youtube had comments from a number of pilots, including a flight school, who regularly fly / were flying that day in the area and knew nothing about it. So apparently Luke didn't clear his airspace very well.

Yeah we skydivers would certainly expect any responsible stunt organizers to make sure a NOTAM was issued.   That should have been arranged in any case - for skydiving & aerobatic flight  - but maybe that somehow got lost in the mess of the failed waiver request. 

Edited May 2, 2022 by pchapman

[JoeWeber 2,667]

11 minutes ago, pchapman said:

Yeah we skydivers would certainly expect any responsible stunt organizers to make sure a NOTAM was issued.   That should have been arranged in any case - for skydiving & aerobatic flight  - but maybe that somehow got lost in the mess of the failed waiver request. 

Was this really flown out of Eloy Airport as reported? Skydive Arizona's Parachute NOTAM might have been the cover. I have to believe a USPA National Director would have helped out a USPA Regional Director, why not? I'm getting a bit curious if anyone at USPA, besides Luke, knew that the stunt jump was specifically not authorized by the FAA.

[spezticle 10]

On 5/1/2022 at 5:25 PM, JoeWeber said:

Was this really flown out of Eloy Airport as reported

It doesn’t really have an address that I can find from Google searching, but I know the location and can find it on Google maps. 
(32.6629477, -111.6765729) 

Also, I’m a nerd with technology that knows all the tricks. You can use an app, Flightradar24, to live playback the entire flight of all reported aircraft. Anyone can look back at April 25 @ 01:30 UTC and see for themselves.
Luke’s plane seems to have stopped reporting at 12500 whereas Andy’s plane seemed to not report at all.

There was an aircraft out of Tucson, N668ER at 12000 ft going to Prescott that flew almost straight through the stunt location within minutes of the actual stunt.

There was another aircraft, United airlines 5527, N701BR on the other side of the mountain at around 17k

I don’t know what a notam looks like to clear air space but this does not look like it.

[JoeWeber 2,667]

58 minutes ago, spezticle said:

It doesn’t really have an address that I can find from Google searching, but I know the location and can find it on Google maps. 
(32.6629477, -111.6765729) 

Also, I’m a nerd with technology that knows all the tricks. You can use an app, Flightradar24, to live playback the entire flight of all reported aircraft. Anyone can look back at April 25 @ 01:30 UTC and see for themselves.
Luke’s plane seems to have stopped reporting at 12500 whereas Andy’s plane seemed to not report at all.

There was an aircraft out of Tucson, N668ER at 12000 ft going to Prescott that flew almost straight through the stunt location within minutes of the actual stunt.

There was another aircraft, United airlines 5527, N701BR on the other side of the mountain at around 17k

I don’t know what a notam looks like to clear air space but this does not look like it.

FullSizeRender.MOV

Formation flights usually have only one aircraft with a transponder code and in communication with ATC. 

[sfzombie13 321]

On 5/1/2022 at 11:49 AM, JoeWeber said:

That said, Luke should resign immediately and, in the hope of regaining some lost credibility, he should depart with an official, scathing, rebuke from the USPA.

maybe we should figure out a way to start getting the uspa officials to start following the rules.  i know it kind of pisses me off that i need to have a uspa membership to jump at a uspa dz.  the one time i traveled since covid to another dz to get my reserve repacked and jump with a couple of friends, i sent off my uspa membership fee in the mail two weeks prior, but hadn't received the card yet.  i figured it would have at least been processed, but it wasn't in the computer so i didn't jump.  i know that's on me, so i didn't argue or do anything but talk a bit more then leave early.  pretty sure that was a whole lot safer than this was.  i was current, b licensed, and had just gotten a repack on the reserve.  i'm tired of hearing about all these uspa officials breaking rules with no consequences when we have to follow even the most restrictive ones.  piss on that.  at the risk of getting this removed, it sounds like a certain political ideology is creeping across everything in this country.

[DougH 270]

3 hours ago, sfzombie13 said:

maybe we should figure out a way to start getting the uspa officials to start following the rules.

They are elected officials, if the voters don't hold officials accountable the officials will operate within their own self imposed constraints.

Some will be model students, and others will push the limits and beyond.

Not much different than all of our congress kritters in Washington DC.

[JoeWeber 2,667]

43 minutes ago, DougH said:

They are elected officials, if the voters don't hold officials accountable the officials will operate within their own self imposed constraints.

Some will be model students, and others will push the limits and beyond.

Not much different than all of our congress kritters in Washington DC.

He's not only an elected official and professional skydiver, his family owns and operates a large DZ in my region. Personally, I like Luke and Andy, but if they really did willfully disregard a written denial from the FAA it is unforgivable and the consequences should be severe and supported by USPA. 

[billvon 2,870]

On 5/1/2022 at 6:04 AM, wolfriverjoe said:

Was the 'investment' (both money and time) in the stunt so high that breaking the rules was considered worth it?

I suspect this.  When the FAA rejected his waiver he had two options:

1) Scrub and be out the money; tell the crews and the media and the audience and the sponsors to go home.
2) Do it and figure that once it worked, the FAA might scold him a bit but he'd get away with it.  "Better to ask forgiveness than permission" and all that.

I suspect he chose 2 figuring that he could get away with it.

[dudeman17 320]

On 5/1/2022 at 5:04 PM, pchapman said:

Yeah we skydivers would certainly expect any responsible stunt organizers to make sure a NOTAM was issued.

That raises an interesting question. NOTAM's are filed through the FAA. So if the FAA had denied his waiver request, and he tried to file a NOTAM for it anyway, what would the FAA have done?

[JoeWeber 2,667]

40 minutes ago, dudeman17 said:

That raises an interesting question. NOTAM's are filed through the FAA. So if the FAA had denied his waiver request, and he tried to file a NOTAM for it anyway, what would the FAA have done?

You can jump within the confines of an existing Parachute NOTAM with the permission of the entity that filed and/or is responsible for maintaining the NOTAM. When I get some time I'll sort out who might have a NOTAM around Eloy.

[Deisel 38]

So Luke has admitted to his transgressions and says he withheld the FAA denial from the team.

 

[sfzombie13 321]

22 hours ago, DougH said:

They are elected officials, if the voters don't hold officials accountable the officials will operate within their own self imposed constraints.

Some will be model students, and others will push the limits and beyond.

Not much different than all of our congress kritters in Washington DC.

after watching the video below and hearing how luke took full responsibility for breaking a rule, i like the guy.  i had no views one way or another before, but i like when someone owns their mistake.  this all by itself raises him levels above anyone in the gop, and most in politics.  i think we're gonna get this moved to sc if we keep throwing political references in here though.  i had a few i had to delete.

[Phillbo 11]

"So Luke has admitted to his transgressions and says he withheld the FAA denial from the team."

 

The denial was all over the interwebs before the stunt (posted here by someone) so how can he say he withheld the information? Something does not add up. 

[olofscience 473]

On 5/1/2022 at 2:04 PM, wolfriverjoe said:

The thing about it is there was virtually zero chance of the plane 'flying away'.
It was in a vertical dive over uninhabited desert.

Not sure where you get your flight dynamics from, but the fact that Andy wasn't able to get in was pretty much it "flying away".

It didn't go very far, but I doubt enough analysis had been done to make sure it didn't. Aircraft have very different spin and spin recovery characteristics, and it was never tested in any of the training runs with the large air brake.

[billvon 2,870]

On 5/4/2022 at 11:46 AM, olofscience said:

Not sure where you get your flight dynamics from, but the fact that Andy wasn't able to get in was pretty much it "flying away".

Yep.  Had both aircraft held their attitude they could have made a better argument about the planes not flying away (or getting far away from the planned impact point at least.)  The fact that one decided to do its own thing even with the brake deployed and the autopilot engaged is a pretty strong argument that the risk of the aircraft going elsewhere was high.