2011 Reno Air Races crash
North American/Aero Classics P-51D · Mechanical failure of trim tab leading to loss of control
From Reno-Stead Airport (KRTS) to Reno-Stead Airport (KRTS)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR11MA454
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- Event fatalities
- 11 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- 10
- Occupants
- 1
- Survivors
- 0
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 69 · all on the ground
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
North American/Aero Classics P-51D
- Aircraft type
- North American/aero Classics P-51
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N79111
- Operator
- James K Leeward · private individual
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Reno-Stead Airport (KRTS), Reno, NVTo Reno-Stead Airport (KRTS), Reno, NV
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Maneuvering · low-altitude flying
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Aircraft structural failure
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft structures
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
From the Wikipedia article
On September 16, 2011, The Galloping Ghost, a highly modified North American P-51D Mustang racing aircraft, crashed into spectators while competing at the Reno Air Races in Reno, Nevada, killing its pilot Jimmy Leeward and ten people on the ground. Sixty-nine more people on the ground were injured. It was the third-deadliest airshow disaster in U.S. history, following accidents in 1972 and 1951.
Accident
During the 2011 Reno Air Races, Jimmy Leeward and The Galloping Ghost were in third place and had just rounded pylon number 8 when the aircraft abruptly pitched up, rolled inverted, then nosedived. The aircraft slammed into the apron at over 400 mph in front of the grandstands in an area containing box seating, disintegrating on impact. There was no fire; the violence of the crash dispersed all of the fuel on board The Galloping Ghost before it had the chance to ignite.
Seven people, including the pilot, died at the scene; four died later in the hospital. The weekend's remaining races at the Reno Air Races were canceled.
Investigation and cause
Investigation
The day after the accident, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) began examining whether part of the empennage had come off before the accident. A photograph taken just before the crash showed the airplane inverted and part of the left elevator trim tab missing.
On October 21, 2011, NTSB investigators said that they found no readable onboard video amid the debris of the racing plane. However, they were still attempting to extract information from an onboard data memory card found among damaged aircraft components and other debris scattered over more than two acres following the crash, as well as hundreds of photos and dozens of videos provided by spectators.
The NTSB thoroughly investigated the extensive modifications made to the airplane. The modifications had made the aircraft lighter and reduced drag but decreased stability. Leeward took the plane to 530 mph during the race, about 40 mph faster than he had gone previously. There was evidence of extreme stress on the airframe demonstrated by buckling of the fuselage aft of the wing and gaps appearing between the fuselage and the canopy during the flight (visible in high-resolution photographs taken by spectators).
The investigation report, released in August 2012, found that the probable cause of the crash was reused single-use locknuts in the left elevator trim tab system that loosened. This led to a fatigue crack in an attachment screw and allowed the trim tab to flutter. This flutter caused the trim tab link assembly to fail, which led to the loss of control of the aircraft. Untested and undocumented modifications to the airplane contributed to the accident. Particularly, the right trim tab had been fixed in place. Had both trim tabs been operational, the loss of the left trim tab alone may not have caused the loss of control. When the trim tab failed, Leeward experienced 17 g, which quickly incapacitated him and likely rendered him unconscious, making it impossible to control the craft.
In 2012, the NTSB released seven safety recommendations to be applied to future air races. These included course design and layout further away from the spectators stands, pre-race inspections, airworthiness of aircraft modifications, Federal Aviation Administration guidance, pilot g-force awareness, and ramp safety.
Text from the Wikipedia article “2011 Reno Air Races crash” (revision 1370663413, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
NTSB narrative
The Safety Board's full report is available at http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/reports.html. The Aircraft Accident Report number is NTSB/AAB-12/01.
On September 16, 2011, about 1625 Pacific daylight time, an experimental, single-seat North American P-51D, N79111, collided with the airport ramp in the spectator box seating area following a loss of control during the National Championship Air Races unlimited class gold race at the Reno/Stead Airport (RTS), Reno, Nevada. The airplane was registered to Aero-Trans Corp (dba Leeward Aeronautical Sales), Ocala, Florida, and operated by the commercial pilot as Race 177, The Galloping Ghost, under the provisions of 14 Code of Federal Regulations Part 91. The pilot and 10 people on the ground sustained fatal injuries, and at least 64 people on the ground were injured (at least 16 of whom were reported to have sustained serious injuries). The airplane sustained substantial damage, fragmenting upon collision with the ramp. Visual meteorological conditions prevailed, and no flight plan had been filed for the local air race flight, which departed RTS about 10 minutes before the accident.
Probable cause
The reduced stiffness of the elevator trim tab system that allowed aerodynamic flutter to occur at racing speeds. The reduced stiffness was a result of deteriorated locknut inserts that allowed the trim tab attachment screws to become loose and to initiate fatigue cracking in one screw sometime before the accident flight. Aerodynamic flutter of the trim tabs resulted in a failure of the left trim tab link assembly, elevator movement, high flight loads, and a loss of control. Contributing to the accident were the undocumented and untested major modifications to the airplane and the pilot’s operation of the airplane in the unique air racing environment without adequate flight testing.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
Wikipedia article: 2011 Reno Air Races crash
- Article
- 2011 Reno Air Races crash
- Revision
- 1370663413 · 2026-08-22 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q153570
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record WPR11MA454
- Event ID
- 20110917X22412
- Case number
- WPR11MA454
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "2011 Reno Air Races crash" (page 33110197, revision 1370663413); merged with NTSB case WPR11MA454 (events / aircraft)
- Date
- NTSB record WPR11MA454: NTSB narrative opening date, consistent with the API date and time (local date)
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record WPR11MA454
- Map position
- NTSB record WPR11MA454: events decimal coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record WPR11MA454: aircraft; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- NTSB record WPR11MA454: operated under Part 91: General Aviation
- Fatalities
- NTSB record WPR11MA454: NTSB API totalFatal
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record WPR11MA454: NTSB API ongroundFatal
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (3)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "2011 Reno Air Races crash" and NTSB case WPR11MA454, matched by the same aircraft registration and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.