The wreckage of two planes that crashed during an air show at Dallas Executive Airport are displayed in Dallas on Saturday.
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The wreckage of two planes that crashed during an air show at Dallas Executive Airport are displayed in Dallas on Saturday.
LM Otero/AP
DALLAS – Six people were killed after two historic military planes collided and crashed Saturday afternoon during an air show in Dallas, officials said.
“According to our Dallas County Medical Examiner, there are a total of 6 fatalities from yesterday’s Wings over Dallas air show incident,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins. tweeted Sunday. He said that the authorities are continuing the work to identify the victims.
Emergency crews raced to the scene of the crash at Dallas Executive Airport, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) from downtown. News footage from the scene showed the crumpled wreckage of the planes in a grassy area inside the airport’s perimeter. Dallas Fire-Scue told The Dallas Morning News that there were no reports of injuries among people on the ground.
Anthony Montoya saw the two planes collide.
“I just stood there. I was in complete shock and disbelief,” said Montoya, 27, who attended the air show with a friend. “Everyone around was gasping. Everyone was bursting into tears. Everyone was shocked.”
Officials did not specify how many people were inside each plane, but Hank Coates, president of the company that organized the air show, said one of the planes, a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber, usually has a crew of four to five people. The other, a P-63 Kingcobra fighter, has a single pilot.
No paying customers were on board, said Coates, of the Air Force Memorial, which also owned the planes. Their planes are flown by highly trained volunteers, often retired pilots, he said.
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said the National Transportation Safety Board had taken control of the crash scene, with the help of local police and fire.
“The videos are heartbreaking,” Johnson said on Twitter.
The planes collided and crashed around 1:20 p.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. The crash happened during the Wings Over Dallas Air Force Memorial Show.
Victoria Yeager, widow of famed Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager and a pilot herself, was also on the show. She didn’t see the crash, but she did see the burning wreckage.
“It was dusty,” said Yeager, 64, who lives in Fort Worth.
A historic military plane crashes after colliding with another plane during an air show at Dallas Executive Airport in Dallas on Saturday.
Nathaniel Ross/Nathaniel Ross Photo via AP
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Nathaniel Ross/Nathaniel Ross Photo via AP
A historic military plane crashes after colliding with another plane during an air show at Dallas Executive Airport in Dallas on Saturday.
Nathaniel Ross/Nathaniel Ross Photo via AP
“We were just hoping everyone had gotten out, but we knew they hadn’t,” she said of those on board.
The B-17, a cornerstone of American air power during World War II, is a large four-engine bomber used in daylight raids against Germany. The Kingcobra, an American fighter jet, was used primarily by Soviet forces during the war. Most B-17s were scrapped at the end of World War II, and only a handful remain today, mostly on display at museums and air shows, according to Boeing.
Several videos posted on social media showed the fighter jet appearing to fly into the bombers, causing them to quickly crash to the ground and causing a huge ball of fire and smoke.
“It was really horrible to watch,” Aubrey Anne Young, 37, of Leander. Texas, who saw the crash. Her children were inside the hangar with their father when it happened. “I’m still trying to figure it out.”
A woman next to Young can be heard crying and screaming hysterically in a video Young uploaded to her Facebook page.
Airshow safety — especially with older military aircraft — has been a concern for years. In 2011, 11 people were killed in Reno, Nevada, when a P-51 Mustang crashed into spectators. In 2019, a bomb went off in Hartford, Connecticut, killing seven people. The NTSB said at the time that it had investigated 21 accidents since 1982 involving World War II-era bombers, resulting in 23 deaths.
Wings Over Dallas bills itself as “America’s Premiere World War II Airshow,” according to a website advertising the event. The show was scheduled for Nov. 11-13, Veterans Day weekend, and guests got to see more than 40 World War II-era aircraft. His Saturday afternoon flight demonstration schedule included the “bomber parade” and “fighter escorts” featuring B-17s and P-63s.
Arthur Alan Wolk is an aviation attorney in Philadelphia who flew in air shows for 12 years. After watching video of the air show and hearing the maneuvers described as “bombers on parade,” Wolk told The Associated Press on Sunday that the P-63 pilot violated the basic formation flight rule.
“He went belly up to the leader,” Wolk said. “It prevents him from measuring distance and position. The risk of collision is very high when you can’t see who you should be in formation with, and that kind of merging is not allowed.”
He added, “I don’t blame anyone and to the greatest extent possible air shows, the pilots and the planes that fly them are safe. Air shows are one of the largest spectator events in America and it is rare that a tragedy how does that happen.”
Wolk said it takes extensive training and discipline to fly in an air show environment. The air show qualifications of the P-63 pilot are not known.
The FAA was also launching an investigation, officials said.
