An Idaho air show where two fighter jets crashed in midair on Sunday was the first to be held on the base since 2018, when a pilot was killed after his hang glider hit the ground in front of distraught spectators.
The Gunfighter Skies event at the Mountain Home Air Force Base, 50 miles southeast of Boise, hadn’t been held for eight years, since the death of Dan Buchanan, 62, in an accident during his show.
Buchanan, a paraplegic aviator who nonetheless had more than 3,000 logged hours as a performing hang glider, was demonstrating his choreographed turns to music while fireworks erupted from his craft when disaster struck, according to the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA).
“It’s very tragic. He was doing high angles of attack and pretending to have communication challenges,” fellow pilot Fred Worth told the AOPA at the time.
Buchanan’s act involved a mock battle pitting his hang glider against an airplane that pretended to confront his smaller craft with close passes and staged banter.
Suddenly, Buchanan appeared to parallel the ground without much airspeed before “he pitched down” and hit the ground nose-first, Worth said.
In response to his death, the remainder of the air show was dedicated “in honor of our dear friend Dan Buchanan, and all the support he has provided for our air shows,” the 366th Fighter Wing, based at Mountain Home, said at the time.
The US Air Force Thunderbirds also shared their condolences on social media.
Mountain Home was also the scene of another crash in 2003 when a Thunderbirds aircraft hit the ground while attempting a maneuver.
That pilot was able to steer the plane away from the crowd and eject less than a second before the craft crashed to earth, and was unharmed.
Sunday’s dramatic mid-air crash involved two US Navy EA18-G Growlers from the Electronic Attack Squadron 129 based in Whidbey Island, Washington, officials said.
Each plane, a variant of the F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet, costs roughly $67 million.
Dramatic video shows the two aircraft appearing to make contact and spinning in tandem before plummeting to earth in a huge fireball, sending smoke pouring into the sky.
“I was just filming, thinking they were going to split apart, and that happened, and I filmed the rest,” said air show spectator Shane Ogden, who filmed the crash.
All four crew members in both jets were able to eject safely, and the plane’s entanglement may have actually been the reason the crew survived, according to aviation safety experts.
“It’s really striking to see,” expert Jeff Guzzetti said. “It looks like they struck each other in a very unique fashion to cause them to remain intact and kind of stick to each other and that very well could have saved them.”
All four are in a stable condition as of Monday morning, base officials said.
“Everyone is safe, and I think that’s the most important thing,” said Kim Sykes, marketing director with the air show’s organizers, Silver Wings of Idaho.
The base was put on lockdown following the crash and the remainder of the air show was canceled.
The cause of the crash is under investigation.
Visibility was good at the time, with winds gusting up to 29 mph when the crash took place, according to the National Weather Service.
With Post wires.
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