Acrobatic pilot Eddie Andreini was killed Sunday at an airshow at Travis AFB in California in front of 100,000 people, who went silent as the plane skidded across the ground and started on fire.

Col. David Mott, 60th Operations Group commander at the base said the plane was trying to perform a maneuver known as “cutting a ribbon” where it inverts and flies close to the ground so that a knife attached to the plane can slice a ribbon just off the ground.

Instead of a death-defying stunt performed yet again, Andreini’s plane “was approximately 40 to 50 feet above the runway when it started to stair-step down in an inverted position before crashing on the tarmac. And then after impact, his airplane slid for about 100 to 150 yards before it came to a stop upside down.”

Andreini was well-known, having been a staple of the West Coast airshow performer crowd for 30 years, doing stunts in a Russian Yak 9-U, a Boeing Super Stearman biplane, and a p-51D Mustang.  It’s currently unknown what caused the crash, but the National Transportation Safety Board and FAA are investigating.  He was 77.