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The DAY AFTER a team of Honda-promoting skydivers performed a formation for a live UK TV advertisement, the plane used for the stunt has crashed. The accident killed the pilot and a skydiver. According to The Daily Telegraph, a total of ten skydivers attempted to exit the stricken plane as "one of the aircraft's wings snapped off and it plunged to the ground, where it burst into flames." The paper also reports that "Honda and Channel 4 said they did not believe any of the skydivers involved in the accident had taken part in the filming of the advert." Clearly, our warning that the stunt could prove a human and PR catastrophe had a firm basis in reality. Whether or not the tragedy will prevent future live stunts remains to be seen.
30 Comments on “Honda Skydiving Plane Crashes, Kills Two...”
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Hey RF,
Nobody likes an “I told you so” – especially when you are talking about tragic deaths.
so was this plane owned by honda, or did it just happen to be the same plane that honda chartered for the stunt?
horrible. sad. I don’t think there are any lessons, given the nature of light aircraft and skydiving to begin with. People do it in spite of the very obvious flirtation with death.
Wait, I’m sorry – how does this prove anything about your warning? Didn’t this happen AFTER the stunt and have nothing to do with the stunt?
Robert Farago: “Firm basis in reality”? Come now, Mr. Farago! This is like the guy who plays a slot machine for hours, ‘knowing’ the win is coming, but then steps away for a few minutes to the washroom, only to find someone else won the jackpot.
You’ll need to present more evidence before a rational actor can accept a theory that goes beyond simple luck (be it good or bad).
“Whether or not the tragedy will prevent future live stunts remains to be seen.”
Good grief. People die in rock climbing accidents every year, and still people climb. 15 people were killed on Mt. Everest in the space of a few weeks in 1996, and yet people still climb and die on the mountain. Even under corporate sponsorship and guidance! (And the armchair climbers remain outraged nonetheless.)
More than likely this plane crash will lead to better inspections, maintenance schedules, and other improvements in engineering.
We can also expect a memorial dive, celebrating the lives lost. Maybe that plane will crash too, but I doubt it.
eh_political: People do it in spite of the very obvious flirtation with death.
Life is a terminal disease. Will that jumbo double bacon-cheeseburger give you colon cancer in 15 years?
http://travel.howstuffworks.com/skydiving8.htm
Note the comparison to driving a car. I think we all accept that very few people get into their cars with suicidal notions. Can we extend the same courtesy to skydivers, dump truck drivers, and even bridge players?
Heck, I don’t even skydive! Maybe that needs to change. Money, meet mouth …
2 people die and it’s almost comical for some. Nice!
Just so you know the plane was chartered for that stunt and not company owned. Something tells me that Skydiving is inherently dangerous.
But I digress…let’s say Honda did a normal commercial and the producer died the next day – would another “told you so” be in effect?
The wing sheared off. Had nothing to do with the stunt. But way to get an “I told you so” out of it. That’s classy.
I totally agree with the posters. You’re being totally illogical. It happened AFTER the stunt, what has been proved…..?
Don’t do stunts on live TV, because the next day you’ll have an accident and die?
Now now, guys. Farago had a real point. Namely, that Honda had booked an overly risky stunt to sell a commercial product. The accident merely proves how risky the stunt was.
Personal risk-taking is one thing, but giving people money to take risks is another. It can be justified (if done for the greater good, i.e. for national defense), but if profit is the only factor, then don’t be surprised if some people call it downright evil.
So it’s both a moral and a marketing problem. Ad hominem words are not in order here. If Farago has the guts to point out the downside of a really questionable campaign, then more power to him.
The accident in no way proves how risky the stunt was – it a mechanical problem with an aircraft which happened to be carrying skydivers. Nothing to do with the stunt itself.
To extend your lack of logic on this one a little further, if they drove to the airport in a 15 passenger van and it rolled over and killed 2 of them, would that also prove the stunt was overly risky?
By the way, your RSS is broken again.
Martin Schwoerer Namely, that Honda had booked an overly risky stunt to sell a commercial product.”
I wonder if we haven’t gone off the deep end with worries about “risk”. As mdf pointed out, life is a terminal disease. It’s tragic that the pilot and the skydiver lost their lives in this accident, but as one who occasionally takes risks with my life, I can’t imagine they would have preferred avoiding the risk to doing something they loved doing. And the fact that the wing snapped off the aircraft was not unlike being struck by lightning. It happens, but let’s not all worry about walking around with ground wires attached every time there is an electrical storm. Just how many airplanes fall out of the sky each year from wing failure, and what does this have to do with advertising?
Also, all of the critiques about “risking lives to do it live” and “giving people money to take risks” could just as easily apply to the Honda sponsored F1 and Indycar races, but I haven’t heard any morale outrage about that?
The Pilatus Turbo Porter, the aircraft involved in the accident, is a robust turbine-powered Swiss utility plane popular with skydive operators because of its climb rate and sliding door. To stay profitable, operators must make as many drops as possible throughout the day, so the plane would have been making a lot of up and down cycles. Jump pilots often drop out of the sky quickly flying tight patterns and usually beat some of the jumpers to the ground. My guess (I’m no structural engineer) would be that repeated rapid descents and years of undue g-loading probably weakened the wing spars to the point of failure. Aviation maintenance standards in the US are some of the highest in the world and such an issue would have more likely been identified beforehand if the operator was based stateside rather than in Spain. Once again this is my opinion.
Skydiving is hard on airplanes, and my initial speculation is that this accident occurred because the airplane had been used for a prolonged period of time under conditions that it was not designed for. If further investigation confirms my suspicions, then the Honda advertisement was clearly risky due to the nature of the stunt and I feel that TTAC was justified in identifying the potential issues beforehand and for posting this wake-up call afterwards.
The commercial and Honda had nothing to do with it, lady luck and the lack of her co-operation, or just bad maintenance played its part. If it had happened during the commercial then you would have had a point. But it didn’t.
Bit of a low blow with the i told you so’s, would have expected better.
So we just proved the obvious – Skydiving is Risky. Does that mean commericals are not allowed b/c something is risky? Should all commericals be done in a padded room using CGI computers to protect everyone from possible harm and relevant to this case not allow them out of the room for the fear that they could die the next day? I like the passenger van analogy as that fits the bill.
What about the performance themed car commercials of them driving fast and sliding – no one ever talks about how risky those maneuvers are even with a professional driver behind the wheel. Does anyone count the driver or cameraman deaths or even the deaths of those involved the day after when the commercial is over? I’m sure there have been some from something going wrong. Anyone ever watch WRC? Watch a race and watch the spectators standing inches from the racecars drifting through corners.
But I will give Honda credit for doing something different – something challenging – something risky – and something “not boring”.
The essential problem that I had with this sky diving commercial was the fact that it was live. IF the accident had occurred during the ad, Honda would have NEVER lived it down. All I said in the previous post was that it was an unnecessary risk with an ENORMOUS potential downside.
The fact that the same plane used in the stunt crashed the next day, killing two people, may or may not have anything to do with– or potentially had anything to do with– the Honda ad. But my basic point remains: Honda took a huge risk to promote its vehicles in a LIVE ad.
I get the point about F1 being live and risky, but surely you understand the distinction between motor racing and creating an event like this.
As a side note…
Another aicraft-related skydiving accident happened over the weekend, this one here in the States.
Martin Schwoerer: “Personal risk-taking is one thing, but giving people money to take risks is another.”
So I guess that’s it for the commercial dive industry then? If you use off-shore oil — and who here doesn’t? — you depend in a large part on paying people to risk their lives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piper_Alpha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Ranger
http://www.oilrigdisasters.co.uk/
“The accident merely proves how risky the stunt was.”
No, the proof of the risk was obvious to all prior to the stunt. These were not the first skydiving fatalities. Honest!
I took Robert’s point more as a cautionary note for folks thinking this is a good idea for ads – if this had gone south during a live ad, I’d say it would not reflect well on who’s paying the bill. Unfortunate accident nonetheless.
mdf: I would say that off-shore oil is an important part of our energy infrastructure, and thus commercial diving is done for the common good. Is there an alternative to commercial diving? Not really. Is there an alternative to live airborn stunts? I think, yes.
Autoblog has no problem saying “It’s a little creepy” to think what it might have been like if the wing had come off during the live broadcast. Which was Farago’s point, very basically, in his original post about the stunt.
Martin Schwoerer: thus commercial diving is done for the common good.
Well, you might have a point, except for the fact that Royal Dutch Shell, et al, are not in this business “for the common good”.
RF,
I find no difference between F1 and skydiving at all. Please explain.
Secondly, I will warn you that having a bunch of auto enthusiasts go out and test cars for reviews is disaster waiting to happen. Maybe the TTAC editor should reconsider the whole enterprise, after all, “What’s the downside?”
Hopefully, I won’t have any I told you so’s on this one. Also, hopefully the inevitable attacks of the nanny state won’t destroy skydiving OR sports cars.
Yeah it sucks.. but its ironic and the fact that the dangers were listed prior to hondas event makes me wonder whats wrong with reporting that the plane did in fact have an accident? How come no one was crying that Mr Farago suggested people could get hurt? Frankly I don’t see how the accident could have been not reported after a story on the very plane last week
Landcrusher: Also, hopefully the inevitable attacks of the nanny state won’t destroy skydiving OR sports cars.
Amen to that.
Is 2 person died, is no fun whichever way it cut.
Perhaps the plane fuselage was overloaded so it cracked. Just like any stress fracture in our cars, but a car is not as deadly as a plane.
Very sorry for the ones who perished.
RF,
You are truly an oracle!
(sad for the people involved, of course)
Was this Hondas new jet?
Piloted by ASSIMO?
There seems to be some confusion over Honda’s use of the word “live” here.
The successful jump, as used in the ad, shows the team spell out Honda – IN A SINGLE, UNEDITED TAKE. That is not the same as a ‘live’ ad, i.e. one where if it goes wrong, the viewing public watch them fail, or worse, fall to their deaths, in glorious realtime.
Ergo, there is no ‘risk’ to Honda. Had they been preparing the ad when the plane crashed, likely as not it’d be front page news in a local Spanish paper that ‘a plane used for corporate filming had crashed’ or somesuch, and we’d be none the wiser.