Pilot of the ex-Soviet jet that crashed at air show is a retired Navy aviator from Texas
The pilot and owner of the ex-Soviet MiG-23 fighter jet that crashed Sunday at the Yankee Air Museum’s Thunder Over Michigan air show is a retired U.S. Navy officer from Texas who just a year ago gave an interview to a TV station that foreshadowed the dangers of flying and his plans for the aircraft.
A National Transportation Safety Board investigator confirmed Monday the pilot also is the plane's owner, and while unnamed at the news conference, he is listed in the air show program and Federal Aviation Administration ownership documents as Dan Filer, of Alto.
John Brannen of the NTSB said the pilot has serious, but not life-threatening, injuries after ejecting from the aircraft moments before it went down. The other person aboard the crashed craft, referred to by the Wayne County Airport Authority as a backseater, also ejected and had minor injuries.
Filer flew jets off aircraft carriers and became a commercial pilot, according to KTBS-TV, a Shreveport, Louisiana, station that reported on him last year. It portrayed him as a real-life Pete Mitchell, the character in "Top Gun: Maverick."
In the interview, the retired Lt. Cmdr., who lives a 2½-hour drive southeast of Dallas, opened the doors of his Longview, Texas, airplane hangar to show off the same MiG that crashed Sunday. It was manufactured by Russian defense company Mikoyan-Gurevich in 1981.
Filer boasted it was the "only privately owned flying MiG-23 in the world."
The aircraft registration numbers for the jet in the TV segment and in photos from the show match.
More: Thunder Over Michigan fighter jet lost power moments before crash, investigation shows
The television station also reported in its four-minute segment it was one of four aircraft he said he owned at the time. Two other aircraft also were MiG fighters that he was restoring, and a third was a training jet that was already airworthy.
Filer, who became a United Airlines pilot after he left the Navy, said he has been collecting the foreign aircraft, because he "kind of missed the upside-down flying, and pulling G’s."
He bought the retired foreign military aircraft, instead of the ones he piloted, he said, because they are much easier to purchase. While Americans can buy demilitarized fighter jets from the government, the permitting and approval process is onerous.
Filer said is MiG was "very loud" with a 60-foot flame out the back. He also described an emotional moment in his career, when he returned from a harrowing combat mission, but another pilot sadly "didn’t come back from his."
Filer said in last year's TV interview he was certified to fly the MiG, which is capable of flying 2.35 times the speed of sound. And, he added, if he could land a sponsor to cover the cost of the fuel, he wanted like to fly his planes at air shows.
Contact Frank Witsil: 313-222-5022 or fwitsil@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: The pilot of the jet crashing at Michigan air show is a naval aviator
