The midair collision between two Navy EA-18G Growlers occurred shortly after 3 p.m. Sunday during the Gunfighter Skies air show at Mountain Home Air Force Base, about 50 miles south of Boise. The jets, from Electronic Attack Squadron 129 based at Whidbey Island, Washington, were part of a scheduled aerial demonstration when they made contact while flying in formation, said Cmdr. Amelia Umayam, spokesperson for Naval Air Forces, U.S. Pacific Fleet.
The base was locked down immediately after the crash, and the remainder of the air show was canceled. “Everyone is safe and I think that’s the most important thing,” said Kim Sykes, marketing director with Silver Wings of Idaho, which helped plan the event.
Videos posted online by spectators showed four parachutes unfolding in the sky as the aircraft spiraled downward before exploding on impact. Shane Ogden, who was filming the jets as they came close together, captured the moment of contact and the subsequent ejection sequence.
“I was just filming thinking they were going to split apart and that happened and I filmed the rest,” Ogden said in a text message. He left the area soon after to avoid interfering with emergency responders.
Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said the crews’ survival was remarkable, noting that midair collisions usually leave no chance to eject. The way the planes struck each other and remained stuck together likely kept the aircraft from tumbling uncontrollably, giving the crews time to eject, he said.
“It looks like they struck each other in a very unique fashion to cause them to remain intact and kind of stick to each other and that very well could have saved them,” Guzzetti said. He added that the collision “appears to be a pilot issue to me” rather than a mechanical malfunction, citing the challenge of close-formation flying.
John Cox, CEO of Safety Operating Systems and an aviation safety expert, said air show pilots are among the best but have little margin for error. “Air show flying is demanding. It has very little tolerance,” Cox said. “The people who do it are very good and it’s a small margin for error. I’m glad everybody was able to get out.”
The air show industry has worked for years to improve safety at the roughly 200 events held annually in the United States. John Cudahy, president and CEO of the International Council of Air Shows, said the average number of deaths at U.S. air shows has fallen from about two per year to closer to one per year over the past decade. There were no air show deaths in 2025 or 2024, and a spectator hasn’t been killed at a U.S. air show since 1952.
“Safety wise we’ve enjoyed really an unprecedented term of few accidents,” Cudahy said. The last fatal crash at a U.S. air show occurred in 2022, when two vintage military planes collided at an event in Dallas, killing six people.
Sunday’s accident was the first at the Gunfighter Skies event since 2018, when a hang glider pilot died during a performance. In 2003, a Thunderbirds pilot escaped injury by steering a malfunctioning jet away from the crowd and ejecting less than a second before impact.
The Navy will lead the investigation into the crash. Because both crews survived, investigators may be able to quickly understand what happened through their accounts of the collision, though military investigations typically release less public information than civilian ones.
Some air shows this year have been canceled at bases where units are flying missions related to the Iran conflict, but the Mountain Home event was not among them. The Air Force Thunderbirds demonstration squadron headlined both days of the show.