Afternoon of August 13, 2023, Thunder Over Michigan air show, a rare and unsettling experience for a privately owned Soviet-era fighter jet. Retired U.S. Navy aviator Dan Filer’s two-seat MiG-23UB experienced an engine failure after executing an aerobatic maneuver at the Willow Run Airport.
Witnesses to the air display captured incredible video footage of the aircraft executing a low-altitude left bank turn when, suddenly, both the pilot and observer ejected from the aircraft into the air, parachuting onto Belleville Lake.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) performed a thorough investigation of the accident, examining the complex circumstances leading up to the decision to eject. Based on the initial report, when the jet was experiencing engine trouble, Filer tried to solve the problem in real time while trying to guide the aircraft back to the airstrip. The backseat observer, however, sensing the time-sensitive nature of the situation, believed he was out of altitude to pull the plane back to the airport and triggered the ejection sequence.
“The rear seat observer stated that the airplane made a pass along the runway and the plan was to go to the left for another pass followed by a landing,” the NTSB report states. “He stated that the engine was not accelerating…They determined that they had some type of engine problem and needed to get back on the ground.”
Due to the configuration of the MiG-23’s ejection system, when the process is initiated for one seat, the other is activated too irrespective of who initiated it. Filer, determined to repair the engine issues and not yet prepared to abandon the aircraft, was ejected out of the cockpit and along with his observer.
The report further confirmed that the airplane crashed onto the ground about one mile short of the end of the runway, with the part of the fuselage that carried the tail surfaces and engine coming to rest alongside an apartment building and the remainder of the airplane shattered and dispersed over a 600 ft-long wreckage path.
