AIR SHOW: Fiery Crash Kills One

Spectators showed up to enjoy the Quad Cities Air Show, instead they witnessed a plane explosion. 

Fifty-eight year old Glenn Smith of Texas was flying the military training jet that burst into flames Saturday. He did not survive the crash.

The FAA has yet to determine the cause of the crash. Investigators collected what was left of the airplane in a Davenport farm field and have been trying to determine what happened in the last moments before the plane went down. So far, there are no signs of mechanical failure.

Glenn ‘Skids’ Smith was the newest member of a group of pilots called the Hoppers Flight Team and he was working toward becoming a certified lead formation pilot. He had 24-years of flying experience and had logged more than 2,000 hours in the air.

The air show continued about an hour after the crash.  The Air Show Director of Security said Smith’s teammates insisted the show go on in his honor. “This is what the pilot would have wanted; his comrades in flight would have wanted it. The other acts …we checked with all of them, ‘Do you want to fly?’ ‘Do you want to ground yourself?’  They all insisted, we are going to fly, this is what he would have wanted, he would have done the same thing for us if it would have been one of us.”