Man, hate to see any crash...especially at air shows.

This is very sad. I saw them at our airshow here in Parkersburg, WV (KPKB) last year. Here are some pictures I took. I'm glad to have seen them perform.

Blue skies to both.....

Damn that's hard to watch. Sure looks like something let go the way it violently pitched down like that.

I too had the privilege of watching this act at our local show. They were excellent performers to say the least. Prayers to there family and friends.

I used to frequent the Dayton air show when I lived in Ohio, so I'm very sad to see another fatal crash there (they had one in 2007 as well, Jim LeRoy's crash -- he had a great performance as well, and I had seen him perform in person in the past). This wing-walking team put on a good show, and they seemed to love their job!

So, what went wrong? I've heard a lot of armchair analysis in the news from people who probably truly have no idea what they're talking about. What are the thoughts around here?

It looks to me as if it was a stall-spin crash. While inverted just prior to the crash, it appears that the nose pitches up relative to the tail of the airplane (and relative to the ground) just before the hard drop of the wing that was carrying Jane. To me that suggests an inverted stall that was aggravated by the weight/drag the wing walking performer put on the wing that dropped (which may have caused that wing to stall more severely than the other, inducing the start of a spin).

I could be totally wrong here, but I'm just trying to figure out where this went from being a great performance to a terrible crash.

Looks pretty much right on the $ to me Kevin.
To low to slow. Sounded like he jammed full power but it was to late. Might have even aggravated it. Lots of energy management needed in a routine like that. No room for error and getting behind power curve. Not saying that's what happened. Just appears to me that way. What a sad deal. Prayers for the families.

The film clip I saw on TV showed more of the approach. It looked like there was very little pitch up before starting the roll, at slow speed, then the roll seemed to stop when the airplane was inverted, with predictable results. Very sad.
That bottom photo of the series sure shows the wingwalker awfully far forward on the top of the cowl, with her arms ahead of it. Don't think I'd wanna do that with that big old prop whirling around up there.

hotrod150 wrote:That bottom photo of the series sure shows the wingwalker awfully far forward on the top of the cowl, with her arms ahead of it. Don't think I'd wanna do that with that big old prop whirling around up there.

I had the same thought, but in another photo you see the same pose and it appears that she's actually in the wing wires, not on the cowl. Only other possibility would be to have the prop stopped, I think.

hotrod150 wrote:The film clip I saw on TV showed more of the approach. It looked like there was very little pitch up before starting the roll, at slow speed, then the roll seemed to stop when the airplane was inverted, with predictable results. Very sad.

It looked to me that as he rolled inverted, he started to drift toward the spectators, realized it and tried to reverse out of the inverted position. By that time he was too low and slow..

Low and slow maybe, but how about pilot becoming incapacitated?
Ron

I don't think it was a stall. He was trying to roll upright. In one of the last photos you can see the aileron deflection. He was rolling right.

buzzlatka wrote:I don't think it was a stall. He was trying to roll upright. In one of the last photos you can see the aileron deflection. He was rolling right.

For what it's worth, with it not quite being inverted, and not quite lined up with the track, it looks like the rudder got blanked out to me?
What ever it was, it is tragic, my thoughts and prayers to everyone concerned