Stunt Pilot Dies In Plane Crash

 Article excerpts
Changes will be made to Wednesday’s Atlantic City Airshow after one of the pilots scheduled to appear died in a plane crash Friday in New York.

Andrew Wright, 53, of Austin, Texas, was practicing tricks for the first-ever New York Air Show in Orange County when his Giles 202 experimental aircraft crashed Friday afternoon near Stewart International Airport.

In Atlantic City, Wright was scheduled to do a 13-minute aerobatics demonstration at 12:06 p.m. and a 10-minute attempt to break the record for inverted flat spins, which stands at 81. The computer securities specialist was to fly 3 miles into the sky, then drop through the air in a series of spins.

Benjamin Granucci, a photographer and editor for the website nycaviation.com, photographed the wreck as it happened.

He said the pilot had flown several passes, performing a variety of tricks, when he went into a dive followed by a steep, corkscrewing climb.

“Partway through the corkscrew, he slowed down,” Granucci said, but he didn’t think anything was wrong until he saw the plane fly into an area off limits to performers because of its proximity to spectators.

“After he was clear of that area, he sort of stopped and just started spinning to the ground,” Granucci said.

He said he heard a thud but didn’t see the plane hit the ground because his view was obscured by trees and a small hill.

Granucci said that when he reviewed his photos, they appeared to show the tail section of the plane twisting off in mid-flight.

State police confirmed the aircraft had an apparent structural failure.
Entire article at
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/alerts_breaking/stunt-pilot-slated-to-fly-at-ac-airshow-dies-in/article_5e689bde-4e52-11e5-b2da-5b2cd24b4228.html

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http://gadfly01.blogspot.com/2015/08/thunder-over-boardwalk-airshow.html