CINCINNATI — A budget analyst with a daredevil streak, Jane Wicker
knew she was taking a risk when she signed up to entertain thousands
of spectators at the Vectren Air Show near Dayton.
She said in a TV interview she felt confident of her ability and said
on her website that lots of practice makes her signature stunt a
"managed risk." She planned to hang underneath the plane's wing by her
feet and sit on the bottom of the airplane while it was upside-down.
It wasn't clear Saturday what went so wrong. The biplane glided
through the sky, rolled over, then crashed and exploded into flames,
killing the wing walker and the pilot, authorities said. No one else
was hurt.
A video posted on WHIO-TV shows the small 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 screamed.
Ian Hoyt, an aviation photographer and licensed pilot from Findlay,
was at the show with his girlfriend. He told The Associated Press 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. He credited the
pilot for steering clear of spectators and potentially saving lives.
"Had he drifted more, I don't know what would have happened," 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 was canceled for the rest of the day, but organizers said
events would resume Sunday and follow the previous schedule and normal
operations. The National Transportation Safety Board said it is
investigating the crash.
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 said, right before the plane makes a quick turn and
nosedive.
Federal records show the 450 HP Stearmans 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 and hung up.
One of the pilots listed on Wicker's website was named Charlie
Schwenker. A post on Jane Wicker Airshows' Facebook page announced the
deaths of Wicker and Schwenker, and asked for prayers for their
families.
A message left at a phone listing for Charles Schwenker in Oakton,
Va., wasn't immediately returned.
Dayton International Airport spokeswoman Linda Hughes and Ohio State
Highway Patrol Lt. Anne Ralston confirmed that a pilot and stunt
walker had died but declined to give their names. The air show also
declined to release their identities.
Another spectator, Shawn Warwick of New Knoxville, told the Dayton
Daily News that he was 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."
Thanh Tran of Fairfield said he could see a look of concern 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."
Wicker's website says 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 talked to WDTN-TV in an interview this week about her signature stunt.
"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 2011, wing walker Todd Green fell 200 feet to his death at an air
show in Michigan while performing a stunt in which he grabbed the skid
of a helicopter.
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.
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.
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