Comments by "Mikko Rantalainen" (@MikkoRantalainen) on "WHY did They DO THIS!? | RedBull Plane Swap stunt" video.

@tradingmedic They were doing this stunt in public airspace. It's no different from asking a permission to record a car crash in your local city for a movie, not getting the permission and doing the crash anyway. If you cannot get permission for the location you want, modify the experiment or switch location. Or do it on private property (in the US, I guess that would be some military reserved airspace restricted from public).
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@BillyBoze You have to remember that they wanted to do this stunt in public airspace. That's when you absolutely need permission from FAA.
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I'd be pretty sure that the insurance company will not be contacted for this stunt. Those planes were considered consumables for this stunt.
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@samik83 I find it pretty hard to believe that FAA would have accepted their request no matter how many requests they would have made as long as the following exception was part of the request: flying a plane without safety pilot inside the plane in the public airspace. This stunt team got their execution order wrong and they should be punished for willingly breaking the rules after getting written decision not to do so. They would have just needed to follow rule "don't promise any specific implementation of the stunt that you're going to need an official permission for, and such permission has been never been granted to anybody". Start to advertise your specific implementation when you get the permission. For me, the stunt would have been exactly the same even if there had been safety pilots in both planes as long as you had uncut video for those safety pilots demonstrating that they do not control the airplane. It would have also made good content to show this failed attempt and the need for safety pilot to take control. And then do a successful stunt on second attempt. You shouldn't pretend that hard stuff is easy.
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@jefferysterner This is Red Bull marketing department, cost is literally a no-issue.
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@JelMain It would have been illegal but they could have gotten FAA permission for that. Instead of doing anything that FAA would have considered safe, they decided to execute the stunt without adequate safety. I think revoking their licenses would be a suitable decision. That obviously wouldn't prevent them from flying planes anyway, as they've already demonstrated but at least they could no longer pretend to be following the rules.
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I think it was stupid to crash that airplane for no good reason. However, I would be totally happy with Red Bull taking risks and potentially destroying the airplane, just like race cars are potentially (and in practice, too) destroyed on track when something goes wrong. (Just check how much damage than Red Bull F1 teams has taken along the years.) However, when you want to execute stunts in public airspace you have to follow the rules of public airspace. Red Bull could have taken this stunt to private airspace or they could have used safety pilots. Instead, they decided to go against direct decision of FAA and execute the stunt in public airspace without safety pilots.
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I think they should have been granted permission for this stunt but not in public airspace as they requested. If you want to do stunt like this in public airspace, you should have the safety pilots in every plane for reasons that should be obvious after watching this video.
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I think it's the same reason why they "couldn't" use safety pilots like they did during the training sessions. Pure marketing department decision. When it comes to marketing department vs aviation safety and disobeying FAA decision, the marketing department should automatically lose. Red Bull team thought otherwise and these soon to be ex-pilots took the risk.
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I was thinking the same thing. Until this, I haven't seen Red Bull stunt that goes against the official regulation. I wouldn't been surprised to find that these two soon to be ex-pilots decided to do the stunt without FAA approval without the Red Bull legal team having any idea about the situation.
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If Brilliant had been sponsor of this episode, that would have been perfect spot for the ad.
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@joerivanlier1180 The only reason this crash happened was because they didn't have safety pilot in the cockpit like they did have during the training. And the FAA decided that removing the safety pilot is not okay. So these soon to be ex-pilots decided to remove the safety pilot anyway and crashed the plane as a result. Had they done the stunt otherwise identically but have the safety pilot inside the plane as required by the FAA, we woudn't be having this discussion. And that's because when you execute stunts like this well, you have a plan for "what if something goes wrong" for real. It seems that they had some kind of half-assed parachute for the plane that obviously didn't work either.
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If they run TT Races on the Isle of Man on public roads after getting denial for the request to close the roads or otherwise make it safe for public (or close the airspace for this specific stunt), would you think it would be fine that they continued without the permission anyway?
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@Huntracony When the plane goes uncontrolled, there's always a possibility that e.g. weld seam of such ad hoc speed brake simply fractures and changes the flight charasterics so much that unpiloted plane could go absolutely anywhere within the limitation of fuel onboard. It's pretty obvious that there's more than one way this kind of stunt might fail and the only reason they took away the safety pilots was marketing deparment's wishes.
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Exactly! Having the safety pilots in those planes would not have been any less awesome than using crash helmet or body armor in some other stunts.
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@purpleether5405 FAA is definitely an entity that also makes mistakes. However, that's the organisation that is trying to keep public airspace safe. Red Bull wanted to do this stunt in public airspace for some reason and for that, they need FAA permission.
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@wickedcabinboy Red Bull or the pilots didn't want to mitigate the risk or they would have just used safety pilot in both planes, like they did during the practice. The fact that FAA explicitly said no for removing the safety pilot should have been pretty clear clue that they are taking non-acceptable risks with the stunt design.
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@AndrewBrowner Law usually works by having everything allowed except explicitly mentioned special cases. Do you think that FAA works different way and only specifically allows some things but all undefined cases are considered disallowed?
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I actually find many Red Bull marketing stunts pretty good. However, when marketing department wants something and official regulator (FAA) doesn't give the required permission, the marketing department MUST switch to another plan.
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