Vlado Lenoch Killed in Airplane Crash After Amelia Earhart Festival - Atchison, Kansas - 7/16/17

[Aviography]

At Bagotville airshow a few weekends ago, a pilot in flight suit saw me taking a couple of snaps from the fence line into the hangar where the Snowbirds were parked, he was quite friendly and offered to escort me into the hangar for a closer look. In the hangar was a P-51 Mustang from Vintage Wings of Canada that he flew with the F-22 Raptor in the Heritage Flight formation that weekend, we chatted a bit about the Mustang which has been one of the aircraft I always loved.

I found out this afternoon this friendly individual with a big grinning happy face was Vlado Lenoch, who was sadly lost earlier today along with passenger Bethany Root in a plane crash involving a different P-51 Mustang......

Fair winds and blue skies to both Vlado and Bethany. Vlado, you will be missed by so many with your friendly personality and passion in aviation .......

[bigt512]

I only got to talk to Vlado a couple of times usually very quickly to say hi as he was trying to get the plane ready for take off. We became Facebook friends years ago. He would always like the pictures that I tagged him in and sometimes he would even comment on them. I could usually tell when it was the off season and he had nothing to do because he would like some of the my other pictures when I would post them. I can not even count how many times I have seen him fly. I was working on getting my video transferred on to dvd and editing my pictures from Battle Creek when i learned of the crash. It was strange because he was on my TV and my computer most of the day.

[RyanS]

I am reminded of this special flyby (after the normal Heritage Flight) in 2007. This was a missing man formation to honor Jim Leroy, who died in a crash the day before this was filmed. Vlado was flying lead in Moonbeam. It now seems like a fitting tribute to him as well.

https://youtu.be/0lTqjeWt73s?t=5m30s

I can only hope that we will get a proper missing man for Vlado at Oshkosh.

Thank you everyone for sharing your own moments! Please keep them coming!

[skyhawk5265]

Really saddened by this news today. I knew him through the airport I worked at where he was a frequent visitor in his mustang and performed at our airshows. Vlado was a great guy that was always friendly, laughing and telling stories. It was a treat to watch him fly. My thoughts are with his and Bethany's family and friends.

[Back288]

So shocked and saddened to hear about the crash today, RIP Vlado and Bethany. We always enjoyed seeing his performances as a regular visitor to our local airshow Thunder on the Lakeshore, and at Airventure. Sadly our local airshow was ended after a 20 year run a few years back, and since then too many of the people who flew there have been lost. Blue skies....

[Dan Gagnon]

I will admit, I don't have the kind of personal relationships with airshow performers, like Ryan and my other friends do. Vlado wasn't around up here in the Ontario region all that often, but I saw a lot of him when I attended Oshkosh in 2013, 2014, and 2015. I especially got to see some of the personal interactions with my friends, whether it was to hook up an on board camera to his aircraft for AirshowStuff, or graciously fulfilling a personal request asked by one of my friends.

Just being around him, and witnessing these interactions, just showed just a sliver of what kind of human being he was, and of course, a hell of a pilot.

I would like send my condolences to his family and everyone who knew him in the airshow industry.

Here are a few pictures from Oshkosh 2015

[Chadderbox811]

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[horse51]

[Flyncrown]

I met Vlado at Boeing right after we both just got out of college. We shared a friend's Steen Skybolt back in those days because neither of us had any money to buy our own airplane. We'd go places together in it together - he'd fly the leg out and I'd fly the leg home. on the leg out he couldn't fly more then about 10 minutes before doing some kind of whiffer-dill. On the way home, after about 10 minutes of straight & level flying he'd ask if he could have it for a minute...then do some more whiffer-dills before giving it back to me. It took us forever to get anywhere. It was in his blood even back then.

He then built a Pitts Special and I restored a Stinson Gullwing. He did his first airshow ever in the Pitts and I was his official announcer. When he left Boeing to take over the family business I thought he was nuts. But he knew what he was doing. I had some adventures with him and Moonbeam but not near the stories others have.

We remained in close communication all these years and have been the best of friends forever. I shall miss him dearly.

Terry

[RyanS]

Thank you to everyone who has posted - I hope we will see more yet!

I wrote up a little tribute to Vlado on our blog earlier:

https://airshowstuff.com/v4/2017/vlado- ... ang-crash/