Vicki Cruse, president of the International Aerobatic Club, died during a Silverstone Race Circuit air show on Saturday in Northamptonshire, England. Police were called to the scene of the accident at 12:12 p.m.
The 40-year-old aerobatic pilot from Santa Paula, California was pronounced dead at the scene after her single-seat Zivko Edge 540 nosedived into the ground during a training day practice session.
According to an eyewitness on the ground, “She flew straight up in the air and then straight back down again. But she dropped straight into the ground. There was no fire and no smoke, just a terrible wreckage. There is no way anyone was getting out of the wreckage.”
The World Aerobatic Championships are being staged over a 13 day period running from August 17 to August 29 featuring 60 pilots from 19 countries. The show has been held every two years since 1960. This is the first time the event has been held at Silverstone.
Cruse won the US national unlimited aerobatic title in 2007. She has been president of the International Aerobatic Club since 2005.
View a photo of Cruse performing an aerial maneuver and view a video she recorded in which she tells how she overcame a fear of crashing.
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Vicki Cruse knew of the perils of aerobatics, a sport requiring both the artistry of figure skating and the tenacity to endure pressures of up to nine times Earth's gravity.
"You can't fix it" if something goes wrong, the seasoned Santa Paula pilot told The Times in 2002 about the sport she excelled at and loved dearly. "You just try to be as safe as you can."
On Saturday, Cruse was competing for the U.S. national team at an international competition in central England when the unthinkable happened. Halfway through a four-minute program, Cruse, who was flying an Edge 540, entered into a maneuver and appeared unable to recover control. The plane went into a nose dive and crashed into the ground, killing her, U.S. team manager Norm DeWitt said in a phone interview from England.
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