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Spectators’ Deaths Highlight Risks of Popular Aerial Racing

Flowers were left near an entrance of the Reno Air Races in Reno, Nev., on Saturday.Credit...Paul Sakuma/Associated Press

RENO, Nev. — It was, for fans and followers of the high-speed sport of air racing, a sure sign of serious trouble: the vintage P-51 Mustang, the World War II fighter known as the “Cadillac of the skies,” pitching violently skyward in a frantic effort by the pilot to gain altitude — and to buy time.

And then, just seconds later, that fight — and the flight — was over, as the plane plunged into a crowd assembled at the National Championship Air Races and Air Show in Reno. By Saturday afternoon, the death toll had reached nine, including the pilot, Jimmy Leeward, 74. The accident also injured dozens of others, with some victims in critical condition and others with severed limbs.

“I saw him pull up and then tip over to the right,” said Howard Struble, a member of a competing team. “And then our hearts stopped, because we knew what was coming.”

In an inherently risky sport, Friday’s crash was one of the deadliest. And whatever the cause, it seemed likely to raise questions over whether the thrill of the events, billed as the “world’s fastest motor sport,” was reason enough to risk fans’ lives.

Air racing is like aerial Nascar, with low-flying pilots negotiating a racecourse marked by pylons at up to 500 miles per hour and sometimes flying wingtip to wingtip. The sport is risky, as are the much more widely attended air shows, where thousands gather to watch aerial acrobatics and stunts. Those shows have an even longer record of accidents involving pilots and spectators.

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A small vintage plane crashed into a crowd at a Nevada air show at the Reno-Stead Airport on Friday.Credit...Ward Howes/Associated Press

Among the worst came on July 27, 2002, when 77 people were killed and 543 injured after a military jet flew into a crowd of spectators and exploded at an air show at the Sknyliv Air Base in Ukraine. The pilots ejected from the aircraft and survived. In August 1988, 70 people were killed during a show at the United States air base in Ramstein, West Germany, when three jets from an Italian stunt-flying team collided and crashed into the crowd. Hundreds among the 350,000 spectators were severely injured.

And even as federal aviation officials were arriving here on Saturday to take the lead in the investigation, a stunt pilot was killed in Martinsburg, W.Va., when his post-World War II plane crashed and burst into flames at an air show. No spectators were injured.

The Federal Aviation Administration does have some oversight over air races, including the one here this weekend. Organizers must file plans with the agency showing any possible disruption of commercial flights, the location of spectators and the availability of emergency equipment. While supporters say that spectator safety is paramount at the events, and that they are closely regulated by the F.A.A., the world of air shows has a more accident-ridden recent past than the nation’s commercial carriers, which have strict rules about everything from hours worked to mandatory retirement age.

Each of 19 previous fatal accidents in the Reno race involved only pilots, and each time they set off calls for increased safety. Race officials have heeded some of those calls, softening some of the sharp turns on the course after crashes in nearby neighborhoods in 1998 and 1999. In 2007 and 2008, four pilots were killed at the races, prompting local school officials to consider barring student field trips to the event, The Associated Press reported.

But the annual races generate tens of millions of dollars for the Reno economy, and for the pilots, there is the lure of $1 million in prize money. On Friday, a Reno casino sports book — for the first time in the history of the race — took bets on the outcome. The betting was suspended after the crash.

On Saturday afternoon, Mark Rosekind, a member of the National Transportation Safety Board, said investigators discovered both a “component” from the plane and a partial piece of its tail, where a three-foot crater marked the spot of impact. That discovery may lend credence to speculation about a mechanical failure of a critical control at the back of the plane known as the trim tab. But Mr. Rosekind said other issues were also under scrutiny, including the ages of the pilot and the plane, how the plane had been modified, its maintenance records and the race’s safety procedures.

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A P-51 Mustang airplane crashes into the edge of the grandstands at the National Championship Air Races and Air Show on Friday.Credit...Ward Howes/Associated Press

“We’re not just interested in the metal,” said Mr. Rosekind, who added that the board would also be evaluating the F.A.A.’s oversight of the air race.

Fans of air racing are just as ardent as car racing fans, and see the danger as part of the sport.

“I don’t think they should cancel air shows; you can’t take away every risk,” said Marcy Klatt, 46, a frequent air show spectator from Pembrook Pines, Fla. “Me getting in a car and driving down the street is a risk. You can get hit crossing the street or break your neck falling out of bed.”

“You just do what you can to be sure that you’re putting in the safety procedures,” she added.

Air race officials said that Mr. Leeward, a real estate developer from Ocala, Fla., had flown in the event many times. According to his Facebook page, he had more than 30 years of flight experience. He was flying a modified P-51 Mustang nicknamed the Galloping Ghost, and had commented in an interview with Live Airshow TV, which broadcasts aviation events, that his plane was “as fast as anybody in the field, or maybe even a little faster.”

“We’ll see on Friday what happens,” he said.

The accident occurred about 4:30 p.m. at Reno-Stead Airport, a small general aviation outpost in the hills north of the city, on a fair afternoon with little wind. It was the last race of the day, a marquee event noted for its blistering speeds, skilled pilots and altitudes as low as 100 feet.

Mr. Leeward was running behind the leaders when disaster struck. “We saw them come through: No. 1, No. 2 and he was 3,” said Jack Reinholz, a retired police officer from California who was watching from a parking lot packed with R.V.’s just south of the airstrip. “And all of the sudden he pulled straight up.”

R. John Hansman Jr., a professor of aeronautics and astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said P-51 Mustangs were “the fastest piston-engineered planes ever built,” capable of speeds of more than 400 miles an hour.

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Medics airlifting some of dozens of spectators hurt at the show.Credit...Liz Margerum/The Reno Gazette-Journal

Such conditions, he said, can turn fatal quickly. “It’s definitely higher risk than normal flight operations, sort of like racecars versus normal cars,” Dr. Hansman said. “They’re flying very, very close to the ground, so there is very little margin for error.”

How high the death toll here might go was uncertain, but the shock of the accident was still palpable on Saturday, as witnesses and race participants struggled to make sense of what happened.

“We’re here to entertain,” said David Costa, a pilot and owner of one of the competing airplanes. “We’re here to get their heart pumping a little bit. We’re not here to kill them.”

One witness, Cameron Mason, an airplane mechanic, said he had seen the plane’s impact from a nearby hangar.

“He crashed into an area where I was hoping there wouldn’t be a big crowd of people,” said Mr. Mason, who stood outside a crew area early Saturday morning, chain-smoking and shivering. “But there was.”

Mr. Mason said that he and other aircraft mechanics at the race had spent the hours after the crash wondering if a failure of Mr. Leeward’s trim tab might have led to a more catastrophic mechanical error. “If it flutters enough,” he said, “your flight controls can rip off.”

Plane Crash in Reno

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Andy Barron/The Reno Gazette-Journal, via Associated Press

Such theories were still conjecture as investigators searched the wreckage on Saturday afternoon.

The disaster was the latest in a series of deadly accidents this year at air shows. Last month, an aerial stuntman plunged 200 feet to his death as he attempted a plane-to-helicopter stunt in Harrison Township, Mich. He was standing on the wing of a small plane, then twice grabbed the skid of a helicopter and fell on the third try. Days before that, a pilot was killed in Kansas City, Mo., as his plane spiraled into a fiery crash after he could not complete a stunt meant for the show.

On Saturday afternoon, a pall had fallen over the airstrip, as followers of the sport — who track planes and pilots the way some fans might follow the Yankees — pulled up stakes and headed home. Crews, some still wearing flight suits, also prepared to leave, as dozens of vending stands sat abandoned.

But despite the accident, most spectators interviewed on Saturday said that the races should continue.

Mark Rouch, 44, a private pilot, said he had attended the Reno races for more than two decades and seen other accidents unfold. “I don’t know that they could change anything,” he said. “It’s a tragedy. But the sport is what it is.”

To be sure, competitors have been killed in the Reno air races before. In 2007, three pilots died in three crashes over four days — one when his plane stalled shortly after takeoff, another when his jet crashed during a race and the third after colliding with another pilot. In 2008, a pilot died when the wings fell off her home-built plane during practice, the 19th death in the history of the races, which started in 1964.

But Mr. Costa, the competitor, said that Friday’s accident was different, taking the lives of those on the ground as well as one of those plowing through the air.

“We fly fast aircraft, close to the ground,” he said. “We sign up for that. But nobody wants to see anybody in the crowd get hurt.”

A correction was made on 
Sept. 25, 2011

Because of an editing error, an article last Sunday about the aftermath of a plane crash that killed 11 at an air show in Reno, Nev., on Sept. 16 described incorrectly a plane that crashed the next day during another air show in Martinsburg, W.Va.. That plane, a T-28, was built in 1958; it was not a “World War II-era” aircraft.

How we handle corrections

Reporting was contributed by Ian Lovett from Los Angeles; Elizabeth A. Harris, Sarah Maslin Nir and Lisa Schwartz from New York; and Eric Lichtblau from Washington.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Spectators’ Deaths Highlight Risks of Popular Aerial Racing. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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