A plane carrying a wing walker crashed at an air show and exploded into flames Saturday, killing the pilot and stunt walker instantly, authorities said.
No spectators were hurt in the crash of the 450 HP Stearman biplane at the Vectren Air Show at Dayton International Airport. No spectators were hurt.
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, erupting into flames as spectators scream.
Ian Hoyt, an aviation photographer and licensed pilot from Findlay, Ohio, was at the show with his girlfriend. He said 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 didn’t have enough air speed and stalled, he said.
“I’m still shaking,” Hoyt said, adding that he had been excited to see the show because he had never seen the scheduled performer — wing walker Jane Wicker — in action.
Another spectator, Shawn Warwick of New Knoxville, Ohio, told the Dayton Daily News that he had been watching the flight through binoculars.
“I noticed it was upside-down really close to the ground. She was sitting on the bottom of the plane,” he said. “I saw it just go right into the ground and explode.”
Than Tran, of Fairfield, Ohio, said he could see fear on the wing walker’s face just before the plane went down.
“She looked very scared,” he said. “Then the airplane crashed on the ground. After that, it was terrible, man … very terrible.”
On the video, the announcer narrates as the plane glides through the sky and rolls over while the stuntwoman perches on a wing.
“Now she’s still on that far side. Keep an eye on Jane. Keep an eye on Charlie. Watch this! Jane Wicker, sitting on top of the world,” the announcer says, right before the plane makes a quick turn and nosedive.
Federal records show the biplane was registered to Wicker, who lived in Loudon, Va. A man who answered the phone at a number listed for Wicker on her website said he had no comment.
A post on Jane Wicker Airshows’ Facebook page announced the deaths of Wicker and pilot Charlie Schwenker and asked for prayers for their families.
A message left at a phone listing for Charles Schwenker in Oakton, Va., was not immediately returned.
The show was canceled for the rest of the day, but organizers said events would resume today. The National Transportation Safety Board said it was investigating the crash.
Wicker’s website says her career began when she responded to a classified ad from the Flying Circus Airshow in Bealeton, Va., in 1990, for a wing-walking position, thinking it would be fun. She was a contract employee who worked as a Federal Aviation Administration budget analyst, the FAA said.
She told WDTN-TV in an interview last 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 was 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 slammed into the runway while performing loop-to-loops and caught fire.
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