List of Air Show Accidents and Incidents - 1999

1999

• September 18 - Reno Air Races (also known as National Championship Air Races) Pilot Gary Levitz, 61, a 30-year race veteran of Grand Prairie, Texas, was racing his highly modified Mustang P-51, which disintegrated during the Gold Unlimited race, scattering debris and damaging a house in Lemmon Valley, just east of the Stead Airport Base, where the races were being held. The NTSB had determined that the tail empenage failed in flight causing the aircraft to break apart.
• September 12 - Harriman-West Airport airshow - Both pilots were killed when a Cessna 337C and a Cessna 305C collided in midair while conducting in-trail fly-bys.
• July 29 – EAA Airventure airshow (Oshkosh, Wisconsin) – Pilot Laird Doctor was seriously injured when his F4U Corsair collided with a stationary F8F Bearcat during its takeoff roll. The Corsair crashed in flames beside the runway and was destroyed. Howard Pardue, the pilot of the Bearcat, was not seriously injured but his aircraft suffered major damage.
• June 12 – Paris Air Show (Paris, France) – A Russian Air Force Sukhoi Su-30MKI demonstrator '01' (with canards and vectored thrust), crashed at Le Bourget Airport. At the completion of a downward spiralling maneuver, the tail contacted the grass surface. With almost no forward speed the fighter was able to pull away from the ground, wings level, with an up pitch of 10–15 degrees and climb to ~150 feet (46 m), with the right jet nozzle deflected fully up and flames engulfing the left engine. Sukhoi test pilot Vyacheslav Averynov initiated ejection with navigator Vladimir Shendrikh departing the aircraft first. The Zvezda K-36D-3.5 ejection seats worked perfectly and both crew descended on to a taxiway unhurt. The Su-30 impacted some distance from the crew. The incident was captured on video.
• June 6 – Milan Rastislav Stefanik airport airshow (Bratislava, Slovakia) – Test pilot Graham Wardell was killed when his BAE Systems Hawk 200 failed to pull out of a low turn and struck the ground. A woman spectator was knocked off a nearby rooftop by the force of the explosion and died of her injuries.