By Dan Sewell and Ashley Thomas
Associated Press Sunday June 23, 2013 6:15 AM
DAYTON — A plane carrying a wing walker crashed today at an air show and exploded into flames, killing the pilot and stunt walker instantly, authorities said.
The crash of the 450 HP Stearman happened at around 12:45 p.m. at the Vectren Air Show near Dayton. No spectators were injured.
A video posted on WHIO-TV shows the plane turn upside-down as the performer sits on top of the wing. The plane then tilts and crashes to the ground, exploding into flames as spectators screamed.
Ian Hoyt, 20, an aviation photographer and licensed pilot from Findlay, was at the show with his girlfriend. He told the AP he was taking photos as the plane passed by and had just raised his camera to take another shot.
“Then I realized they were too low and too slow. And before I knew it, they hit the ground,” he said.
He couldn’t tell exactly what happened, but it appeared that the plane stalled and didn’t have enough air speed, he said.
“I’m still shaking,” Hoyt said. He said he had been excited to see the show because he’d never seen the scheduled performer — wing walker Jane Wicker — in action.
The show has been canceled for the remainder of the day but will resume Sunday. The names of those killed weren’t released immediately, but the WHIO video identified the performer as Wicker (web biography). A schedule posted on the event’s website also had Wicker scheduled to perform.
“All of a sudden I heard screaming and looked up and there was a fireball,” spectator Stan Thayer of Wilmington, Ohio, told WHIO.
Wicker’s website says she responded to a classified ad from the Flying Circus Airshow in Bealteton, Va., in 1990, for a wing walking position, thinking it would be fun.
She told WDTN-TV in an interview this week that her signature move was hanging underneath the plane’s wing by her feet and sitting on the bottom of the airplane while it’s upside-down.
“I’m never nervous or scared because I know if I do everything as I usually do, everything’s going to be just fine,” she told the station.
Wicker wrote on her website that she had never had any close calls.
“What you see us do out there is after an enormous amount of practice and fine tuning, not to mention the airplane goes through microscopic care. It is a managed risk and that is what keeps us alive,” she wrote.
In 2007, veteran stunt pilot Jim LeRoy was killed at the Dayton show when his biplane crashed and burned.
Organizers were presenting a trimmed-down show and expected smaller crowds at Dayton after the Air Force Thunderbirds and other military participants pulled out this year because of federal budget cuts.
The air show, one of the country’s oldest, usually draws around 70,000 people and has a $3.2 million impact on the local economy. Without military aircraft and support, the show expected attendance to be off 30 percent or more.
Associated Press Sunday June 23, 2013 6:15 AM
DAYTON — A plane carrying a wing walker crashed today at an air show and exploded into flames, killing the pilot and stunt walker instantly, authorities said.
The crash of the 450 HP Stearman happened at around 12:45 p.m. at the Vectren Air Show near Dayton. No spectators were injured.
A video posted on WHIO-TV shows the plane turn upside-down as the performer sits on top of the wing. The plane then tilts and crashes to the ground, exploding into flames as spectators screamed.
Ian Hoyt, 20, an aviation photographer and licensed pilot from Findlay, was at the show with his girlfriend. He told the AP he was taking photos as the plane passed by and had just raised his camera to take another shot.
“Then I realized they were too low and too slow. And before I knew it, they hit the ground,” he said.
He couldn’t tell exactly what happened, but it appeared that the plane stalled and didn’t have enough air speed, he said.
“I’m still shaking,” Hoyt said. He said he had been excited to see the show because he’d never seen the scheduled performer — wing walker Jane Wicker — in action.
The show has been canceled for the remainder of the day but will resume Sunday. The names of those killed weren’t released immediately, but the WHIO video identified the performer as Wicker (web biography). A schedule posted on the event’s website also had Wicker scheduled to perform.
“All of a sudden I heard screaming and looked up and there was a fireball,” spectator Stan Thayer of Wilmington, Ohio, told WHIO.
Wicker’s website says she responded to a classified ad from the Flying Circus Airshow in Bealteton, Va., in 1990, for a wing walking position, thinking it would be fun.
She told WDTN-TV in an interview this week that her signature move was hanging underneath the plane’s wing by her feet and sitting on the bottom of the airplane while it’s upside-down.
“I’m never nervous or scared because I know if I do everything as I usually do, everything’s going to be just fine,” she told the station.
Wicker wrote on her website that she had never had any close calls.
“What you see us do out there is after an enormous amount of practice and fine tuning, not to mention the airplane goes through microscopic care. It is a managed risk and that is what keeps us alive,” she wrote.
In 2007, veteran stunt pilot Jim LeRoy was killed at the Dayton show when his biplane crashed and burned.
Organizers were presenting a trimmed-down show and expected smaller crowds at Dayton after the Air Force Thunderbirds and other military participants pulled out this year because of federal budget cuts.
The air show, one of the country’s oldest, usually draws around 70,000 people and has a $3.2 million impact on the local economy. Without military aircraft and support, the show expected attendance to be off 30 percent or more.