Rebecca Boone
Updated ,first published
Boise, Idaho: All four crew members ejected safely after two Navy jets collided and crashed during an air show at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in western Idaho, officials said.
The collision on Sunday (US time) involved two US Navy EA18-G Growlers from the Electronic Attack Squadron 129 in Whidbey Island, Washington, said Commander Amelia Umayam, a spokeswoman for Naval Air Forces, US Pacific Fleet.
The aircraft were performing an aerial demonstration when the crash happened, Umayam said. The four crew members from both jets safely ejected and the crash was under investigation, she said. The crew members were in stable condition, base officials said.
Nobody at the military base was hurt, said Kim Sykes, the marketing director with Silver Wings of Idaho, which helped to plan the air show.
“Everyone is safe and I think that’s the most important thing,” Sykes said.
The base said in a social media post that it was locked down following the incident.
Videos posted online by spectators showed four parachutes opening in the sky as the aircraft plummet to the ground near the base, about 80 kilometres south of Boise.
The EA-18G Growler is a variant of the F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet with sophisticated electronic warfare systems.
Shane Ogden said he was filming the two jets as they came close together. A video he captured shows the two aircraft appear to make contact and then spin in tandem as the crew members eject and their parachutes open. The planes then fall together, exploding into a fireball upon impact as the crew members drop to the ground nearby.
“I was just filming thinking they were going to split apart and that happened and I filmed the rest,” Ogden said in a text message. He said he left soon after the crash because he did not want to get in the way of emergency responders.
Organisers said the popular air show that includes flying demonstrations and parachute jumps is a celebration of aviation history and a look at modern military capabilities. The US Air Force Thunderbirds demonstration squadron headlined the show both days.
The National Weather Service reported good visibility and winds gusting up to 47km/h around the time of the crash.
It was remarkable both crews were able to eject from their planes, and aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said that may have been possible because of the way the planes collided and appeared to remain stuck together in midair before falling to Earth. Crews usually don’t have a chance to eject in a midair collision, he said.
“It’s really striking to see,” 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.
“It appears to be a pilot issue to me. It doesn’t look like it was a mechanical malfunction. Rendezvousing with another airplane in formation flight is challenging, and it has to be done just right to prevent exactly this kind of thing.”
Aviation safety expert John Cox, the chief executive of Safety Operating Systems, said the pilots who perform at air shows are among the best, but there was little room for error.
“Air show flying is demanding. It has very little tolerance,” Cox said. “The people who do it are very good and it’s a small margin for error. I’m glad everybody was able to get out.”
This year’s Gunfighter Skies event was the first at the base since 2018, when a hang glider died in a crash during an air show performance.
In 2003, a Thunderbirds aircraft crashed while attempting a manoeuvre. The pilot, who was not hurt, was able to steer the plane away from the crowd and eject less than a second before it hit the ground.
The air show industry has been working to improve safety for years at the roughly 200 events held each year in the US. The last fatal crash at an air show came in 2022 when two vintage military planes collided at an event in Dallas and killed six people.
An average of 3.8 deaths a year occurred at US air shows from 1991 to 2006, said John Cudahy, the president and CEO of the International Council of Air Shows. That fatality rate has been improving and since 2017 there have been an average of 1.1 deaths per year even including the 2022 crash.
There were no US air show deaths in 2023 or 2025, and a spectator hasn’t been killed at an air show in the US since 1952.
“Safety-wise we’ve enjoyed really an unprecedented term of few accidents,” Cudahy said.
Investigators may be able to quickly get an idea of what happened in Sunday’s crash because the crews of both planes survived and will be able to tell investigators what they saw and experienced before the collision.
The Iran war has led to the cancellation of about 10 air shows this year at bases where military units are flying missions related to the conflict. But most air shows have been able to continue as planned.
AP
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