WING WALKER. PILOT KILLED DURING AIRSHOW PERFORMANCE IN OHIO

摘要

Wing Walker Jane Wicker and pilot Charlie Schwenker were killed June 22 while performing at the Vectron Dayton Airshow near Dayton, Ohio. Wicker's 450-horsepower Stearman biplane crashed and burned during a low-altitude inverted pass. The FAA and NTSB are investigating the cause. Wicker, 44, had been a budget analyst at the FAA. She began wing walking in 1990 for the Flying Circus in Bealeton, Virginia, after answering an advertisement in The Washington Post. She developed a unique routine with her then-husband, Kirk Wicker, in which she would hang upside down from the N-strut of a Stearman. After Kirk rolled the airplane inverted, Jane would be sitting upright on the underside of the lower wing. "It's kind of a showstopper," she told AOPA Pilot in the November 2011 feature story, "Walking Back On."