It's been nearly a year since a plane crashed at the Thunder Over Michigan Air Show, sending two people to the hospital.
As the air show returns this weekend to Willow Run Airport, safety inspections are top priority as thousands are expected to attend.
For people living at an apartment complex in Van Buren Township, images of a fiery crash of a privately-owned Russian fighter jet remain vivid, to say the least.
I covered the crash as breaking news back in August 2023 with witnesses sharing their fear over an engine failure involving the plane at the air show.
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"We do a bunch of big inspections back at Shaw Air Force Base," Elias Sanchez, the senior airmen and crew chief for the U.S. Air Force, told me on Thursday.
““For every hour of flight, there’s 16 hours of inspection and maintenance on the aircraft," Maxwell Samets-Thomas, a Viper Demo Superintendent for the U.S. Air Force, added.
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Samets-Thomas and his crew travel the country for air shows, looking closely and testing every inch of their Air Force F-16 Venom planes.
“Walk me through what you’re doing to ensure the plane is safe to fly?" I said.
"They inspect the aircraft. Before they fly, I also look it over to make sure everything they saw was good," Samets-Thomas said.
The show's director, Kevin Walsh, also told me safety plans and response crews are going to great lengths. He points out last year's crash was outside of the performance area, and the mechanical problem was an isolated event that thankfully didn't seriously harm anyone in the nearby apartment complex or any of the 30,000 people who came to see the show.
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“I’m hoping that they talked to the people behind the air show, about how close this was to living quarters so they take precautions," one neighbor told us.
The show will run from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For more information, visit https://thunderovermichigan.org
