NTSB Releases Preliminary Report on Recent Air Show Crash

The report is the Board’s first official review of the accident that shocked air show visitors and the aviation community alike late last month.

According to the NTSB, Jensen appears to have recovered from an inverted spin shortly before his biplane started to pitch up. This pitch up was followed by an abrupt roll to the left, after which, the report says, “the nose dropped and it descended, impacting the ground.”

Jensen was a veteran air show pilot with 15 years of aerobatics experience at the time of the accident. When he was not flying in the airshow circuit, he flew Boeing 747s as a captain for Delta. He was piloting a modified biplane, based on a Pitts Model 12 known as “the Beast,” at the time of the crash.