A pilot has died after a stunt at an acrobatics airshow in Portugal went wrong, leading him to collide with one of his teammates.
The man has been named by Spanish newspapers as Manuel Rey Cordeiro, a Galicia resident with decades of experience as an aerobatic stunt performer.
He was part of a team of Spanish and Portuguese pilots called the Yakstars – named after their Yakolev Yak-52s trainer planes, designed in the Soviet era that were produced in Romania up to 1998.
A video of the crash at the Beja AirShow on Sunday shows the pilot dropping his aircraft in preparation for a stunt that was supposed to see him soar up into formation with the other five team members.
However, his plane collided with another – causing it to crash to the ground and explode into flames.
The pilot of the other plane, a 37-year-old Portuguese airman, managed to make an emergency landing and was taken to hospital – but reportedly discharged soon after.
The Beja AirShow is Portugal’s biggest air festival and includes displays from some of the world’s most famous aircraft – such as France’s Mirage 2000 and US F-16s.
The rest of the show was cancelled by the Portuguese air force.
Patrícia Fernandes, a spokesman for the air force, said there would be an investigation into the crash but added it would “take some time until we can understand what happened”.
According to Yakstars’s website, they are the largest civilian aerobatic display team in southern Europe and one of the largest in the world.
Mr Cordeiro, who was born in Vigo, northwestern Spain, in 1962, had been a pilot for more than 30 years, most recently working for the Spanish commercial airline Vueling.
He had competed and won prizes at both national and international levels, including being Spain’s ultralight aviation champion at the age of 30.
Spectators were also supposed to see performances by the UK’s RAF Falcons parachute display team at the airshow.
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