[Joeaksa]

MRM,

Big difference is that the larger the airplane is, the lower the "G" limits are on the airframe. If you are a very good aerobatic pilot you can do a lot of things in ANY airplane, just as you can do a lot of things in any car. That said, you could take a city bus on a race track but it would be no where near as good as our 911's or a Formula car. They can in most cases do the same things, just not as fast or as well.

The problems begin when everything is not done correctly in the maneuver. If the smallest thing does not go right, then you can overstress the airframe and then life is not good.

A smaller fighter is designed to take stresses like this where a larger transport aircraft is not. The fighter will take "mistakes" whereas the larger airplanes may not. Fighters are designed to in some cases take 10+ "G's" where a transport aircraft is designed to take only 3.5 at most. The fighters have ejection seats to get you out when things go "not good" while very few if any of the transport catagory planes have an ejection seat. You ride it down and take your chances in the larger birds.

Good case in point is the American Airlines Airbus that lost its tail section over NYC just after 9/11. The crew did nothing that any other crew might not have done, just pushed the rudder back and forth in response to some turburlence.

Its something that any pilot might do while flying but in this case Airbus built an airplane that would not take the stresses. In this case the plane was flying below Va, which is called maneuvering speed in airplanes, and should have been able to use the full deflection of ANY of the flight controls, but instead the vertical portion of the tail broke off when this happened. After this accident the pilots are told (and trained) not to use the rudder when in turburlence. Jeez guys, how about building the plane stronger where you can used the flight controls, but then this is a frog airplane and they do not think like Boeing.

In short, if the maneuver is done correctly then you can do many of the same maneuvers with any airplane. The key is the word "correctly" and if the smallest error or gust of wind occurs, are you ready to die whilst doing it?

M21, good videos. Interesting thing is that they still, to the best of my knowledge, have not found out whose airplane that is nor who was flying it. It was staged so there are enough people who know about it (like the Ferarri drive through Paris 20 years ago) and the truth will get out eventually.

Joe