Anchorage pilot among injured at air show

Joraanstad saw the plane roll and zip toward the crowd. That's when the 25-year-old Pen Air pilot and other spectators realized they were in trouble.

" 'He's aiming right at me,' " Joraanstad remembered thinking. "I'm sitting there and I'm looking up and this plane is coming straight down. And I just started running as fast as I could."

"When it started coming down, that's when everybody knew it was probably going to hit and people started screaming," he said. "It was out of control. It was crazy."

The souped-up World War II-era fighter smashed into box seats alongside the course 30 or 40 feet from where Joraanstad had been sitting, he recalled Saturday. Authorities said nine people died as a result, with more than 50 hurt. The injured included Joraanstad, who was hit in the back by flying metal and cut on his head by debris, he said from a Reno hospital bed.

A wound roughly a foot long scarred his back. His head needed eight stitches, he said.

Joraanstad was thrown to the ground and didn't realize he was hurt at first. He jumped up again and started running "out of pure adrenaline," then collapsed. Another spectator held his hand as emergency responders scrambled to help the wounded, Joraanstad said.

"As I was laying there, I kind of looked around and there wasn't a whole lot left of the plane," he said. "The biggest pieces I could see were about the size of a quarter or silver dollar. There was just nothing left."

An ambulance rushed him to a hospital, where he underwent an hour and a half of surgery to clean and stitch his wounds, Joraanstad said.

"It missed my spine and it missed my kidney and it missed my lung, just by a hair on all three of them," he said.

Saturday marked Joraanstad's four-year anniversary flying Saab 340s for Pen Air, he said. This was his third year attending the Reno races, "kind of like the World Series of flying," he said.

The pilot of the ill-fated P-51 -- 74-year-old Jimmy Leeward -- was flying in the unlimited class, which includes piston-driven planes that can reach speeds of 500 mph.

Joraanstad said it's tragic that people lost their lives but he doesn't fault Leeward's flying and suspects a mechanical failure.

"I do not hold a grudge against the pilot or the team," Joraanstad said. "It's just, things happen. I'm not angry at anybody. It's just a freak accident."