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 recreational formation flight from Spruce Creek, Florida, involving five aircraft, resulted in a mid-air collision between a Cessna 170 and a Grumman Tiger during a maneuver to change formation.
- The NTSB attributed the accident to the Cessna pilot's failure to maintain clearance, identifying the "stepped-down configuration" of dissimilar aircraft (high-wing and low-wing) as a contributing factor due to potential blind spots.
- The collision occurred as the Cessna, a high-wing aircraft, moved to a new position, with its wing likely obstructing the pilot's view of the low-wing Tiger.
- The NTSB criticized the informal "Gaggle Flight" formation group for its lack of structured training, proficiency evaluation, and safety standards, prompting some participants to reassess the inherent risks of formation flying.
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