World

Video Shows Polish Military Jet Lose Control During Demo, Bursting Into Flames

Aermacchi M-346 arrives RAT Fairford 13 July2017

Wikimedia Commons/Public/Adrian Pingstone, Public Domain

Ilan Hulkower Contributor
Font Size:

A Polish military training jet was captured on video crashing and bursting into flames during a rehearsal for a flying display Friday.

Remiza.pl, a Polish Twitter account user, uploaded a video of the incident. (RELATED: F-16 Fighter Jet Crashes Near New Mexico Airbase)

The video started by showing a plane on the descent. The plane crashes and bursts into a giant fireball upon impact with the ground. The plane can be seen — still alight — sliding across a field and leaving black and white smoke in its wake.

“The video was sent in by a reader,” Remiza.pl wrote in Polish.

Przemek Szawlowski tweeted a second — albeit more distant — video of the incident. 

The footage showed the aircraft dropping from the sky.  The video captured the apparent moment of impact when a fiery explosion could be seen rising in the distance.

“Today at the airport in Gdynia, during a training flight M-346, a white-tailed eagle hit the tarmac. Rescue operation underway,” Polish General Command tweeted, according to a translation.

General Command acknowledged in a later statement in Polish that the pilot, Major Robert “Killer” Jeł, tragically “passed away.”

“Join us in mourning and sadness, we express our condolences to the family and loved ones,” General Command added in Polish.

Jeł was an instructor who trained cadets at the Air Force Academy in Dęblin, The Aviationist reported.

He and Major Adrian Chudzinski were reportedly the two pilots of Poland’s M-346 Demo Team that debuted at Poland’s Radom Air Show in 2023.