Leaderboard

Excellent point, meshes with the opinion I've been forming on the subject. For those who are hanging onto "it doesn't say I can't do it" and/or "it's a 1-g maneuver" [despite the quoted text from the flight manual, not to mention good old-fashioned common sense when discussing a cabin-class type aircraft]: even if I agreed with you (I don't), even if you could prove that the maneuver was performed 100% perfectly & safely (you can't), even if Masshole were able to provide us with a physics equation demonstrating unequivocally that there was no possibility of rolling an MC-12 going horribly wrong (she cannot)... i.e., completely taking the "right or wrong" question out of the discussion... I would still want these guys hung out to dry. Why? Because if you are too flat-out stupid and/or have such incredibly low SA as to think that doing so would in any way, shape, or form not be a problem in today's Air Force--well, then, you're too fucking clueless to be trusted with any aspect of the mission. Want to argue that today's culture is too restrictive? I may or may not agree, and it's a debatable topic--but it is what it is, and only an ostrich could fail to understand the inevitable consequences of taking such an action.

Obviously you were there and know exactly what and how it happened, right? An Aileron Roll... which is different than a barrel roll... is a ~1G maneuver. It's not terribly hard to do. If you're putting negative loading on the aircraft, you just suck. Anyways... all agreed, it was a bad decision in the current climate... but from a 'safety of flight' standpoint, it's no different than an intentional / complacent over-g on a 50 year old airframe. Normal category aircraft, from an FAA perspective, aren't certified to do aerobatics because they're not required to go through a certification process (which may or may not mean they, structurally, can handle it). Not condoning what happened here, but let's just keep this in perspective.