On a Saturday morning in April 2017, a swarm of airplanes—40 pilots attended the preflight briefing—took off from Spruce Creek Airport in Florida for a flight to nearby Titusville to attend an EAA pancake breakfast. The Saturday morning breakfast flight to various destinations is a tradition at the private airstrip, the centerpiece of a gated community with a population of several thousand residents and hundreds of airplanes.
A Formation of Dissimilar Aircraft Unravels
Pilots are endowed with the right to take risks.
Key Takeaways:
- A mid-air collision occurred between two highly experienced pilots during a recreational formation flight in 2017 while performing a maneuver to change aircraft formation.
- The NTSB attributed the accident to one pilot's failure to maintain clearance, citing the "stepped-down configuration" of dissimilar aircraft, which likely created blind spots, as a contributing factor.
- The investigation criticized the informal "Gaggle Flight" formation group for its lack of structured training, evaluation, and certification standards, contrasting with more formalized formation flying programs.
- The incident prompted some residents of the Spruce Creek community to re-evaluate the inherent risks of informal formation flying, despite initial resistance to the NTSB's call for stricter protocols.
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