The flight instructor for Top Gun: Maverick was killed during a New Mexico air show horror crash.
Charles Thomas ‘Chuck’ Coleman was the only person on board the two-seat Extra Flugzeugbau EA300 monoplane when it went down around 2:30pm on Sunday during the Las Cruces Air and Space Expo at Las Cruces International Airport.
Authorities said Coleman was performing aerobatics when the plane crashed about a half-mile West of the airport. The air show was called off after the crash.
Coleman was the aerobatic flight instructor on the 2022 film Top Gun: Maverick, even having trained one of the lead actors, Miles Teller, who even appeared on his Instagram.
The experienced flier had to fly more than 100 flights to prepare the actors for flight in US Navy F-18 Hornets for the blockbuster.
New Mexico State Police, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the crash that led to his death.
The airport was temporarily closed during the initial investigation, with only scheduled and emergency response flights permitted.
‘We would like to extend our deepest condolences to the loved ones and fans of Chuck Coleman,’ Las Cruces Mayor Eric Enriquez said in a statement Monday.
Coleman’s website said he was based out of California and was an engineer, aerobatic and test pilot with more than 10,000 hours of flight time.
He performed at hundreds of airshows and had provided more than 3,000 rides in aerobatic aircraft, according to his website.
‘He was one of the most skilled pilots out there,’ his friend, Christopher Van Pelt told KFOX. ‘think what this loss represents is, is really the loss of a mentor, the loss of a friend.’
Coleman and Van Pelt became friends in 2010 and instantly connected. They’ve spent plenty of time in the air together.
‘We spent a whole lot of time together. I can’t even count how many hours we spent in the air together,’ he told KFOX. ‘I absolutely loved working with Chuck.
‘He was very skilled and also very talented. but you know, when you’re riding on the razor’s edge, this sort of thing can happen no matter how good you are.’
Van Pelt said Coleman’s resume was the ‘height of the size of my body,’ saying the flight instructor ‘got to work on just a ton of fascinating things.’
The friend recalled Coleman getting a ‘kick out of’ being asked to join Top Gun: Maverick and work with the likes of Teller and others.
‘That was something that he really got a kick out of. Just giving them, really, their first experience before they went off to film the movie,’ he told KFOX.
Just days before his death, Coleman had expressed how excited he was for the air show.
‘It’s going to be a great event with this, look at this sky you have here in New Mexico, just a spectacular type of thing,’ he said at a press conference.