A female wing walker died in a fiery plane crash at a Dayton, Ohio air show on Saturday, June 22. Jane Wicker, a single mother of 2 teenage boys, died along with her pilot, Charlie Schwenker. The tragic accident occurred during the Vectran Air Show in Dayton at 12:45 p.m. Saturday in front of horrified spectators.
A video uploaded to Youtube.com shows Wicker sitting on the bottom of the wing as the biplane flies upside down at 110 mph, about 100 feet above the ground. As Wicker begins waving to the crowd, the wing suddenly dipped and the biplane plowed straight into the ground, exploding in a giant fireball.
“I noticed it was upside down really close to the ground,” spectator Shawn Warwick told the Dayton Daily News. “She was sitting on the bottom of the plane,” he said. “I saw it just go right into the ground and explode.”
According to the Daily Mail UK, Wicker took an interest in aviation in 1988. She took flying lessons and earned her pilot’s license in 1989, all while working full time as a budget analyst at the FAA.
Wicker met her husband, Kirk Wicker, at a wing-walking audition in 1989 and he became her first pilot. The couple had 2 boys before divorcing in 2002.
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