DETROIT − A retired Russian fighter jet flying in a Michigan air show crashed Sunday afternoon, as thousands of spectators, including children, watched in horror.
The two people aboard ejected before the jet went down just after 4 p.m., but when the plane hit the ground, it burst into a raging fireball, narrowly missing an apartment building in Van Buren Township and hitting vehicles but not injuring anyone. Emergency crews rushed to extinguish the flames.
The jet was flying in Yankee Air Museum’s Thunder over Michigan air show at the Willow Run Airport near Ypsilanti, a city between Ann Arbor and Detroit.
The plane, a former Soviet − now Russian − MiG-23 aircraft, was doing aerial maneuvers. It was not immediately clear what malfunction led the two aboard to eject and the jet to crash. The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating.
Videos taken by spectators appeared to show an explosion before the two people in the jet ejected.
“The pilot and backseater successfully ejected from the aircraft before the crash,” Randy Wimbley, a spokesman for the Wayne County Airport Authority said. “While it did not appear they sustained any significant injuries, first responders transported the pair to a nearby hospital as a precaution.”
The pilot, listed as Dan Filer in the program, and backseater can be seen ejecting, as their parachutes opened and eased them back to the ground. Some media accounts reported the two were in stable condition after being rescued.
The plane, Wimbley said, crashed into the parking lot at the Waverly on the Lake Apartments, striking unoccupied vehicles, but “no one at the apartment complex nor the air show was injured.”
Sunday’s crash falls on the heels of two fatal ones last month as an air show was underway in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. A helicopter and a gyrocopter collided in midair, leaving two dead and two injured. Two others died earlier in the day when a single-engine plane went into nearby Lake Winnebago.
On Sunday, witnesses − including people who were not at the air show but close enough to see it − posted video of the crash to social media. They described a loud boom and then plumes of dark smoke rising south of the airport.
The two-day show was celebrating its 25th anniversary, and Sunday was the last day.
Matthew Gerick, who was at the show, watched the two people eject, and then the plane zoom to the ground.
“Like, did we just watch that happen?” he told the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network, after the plane went down. “I was sitting over on Beck Road watching the plane fly out toward (I-)94 when it kept getting lower and lower. Then my wife and I saw the black smoke so we drove down to see the crash on 94 and it landed right next to the apartment building.”
Contact Frank Witsil: fwitsil@freepress.com. Free Press reporters Jasmin Barmore and Kylie Martin contributed.
