Ex-NASCAR star Greg Biffle's deadly plane crash recalls several aviation tragedies to hit sports world
Tragedy struck the world of NASCAR on Thursday when a plane carrying former racing star Greg Biffle, members of his family and others crashed in North Carolina.
The plane was returning to the Statesville Regional Airport roughly 10 minutes after takeoff for an "emergency landing." Biffle, 55, was killed alongside his wife, Cristina, and children Ryder, 5, and Emma, 14. Three other people killed on board were identified as Dennis Dutton, his son Jack and Craig Wadsworth.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was still investigating the cause of the crash.
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The deadly aviation incident was the latest that has struck the sports world.
The U.S. figure skating community took a hard hit in January 2025 when a U.S. Army helicopter collided with an American Airlines plane over the Potomac River. Six figure skaters associated with the Skating Club of Boston perished in the crash, including Jinna Han and Spencer Lane, two coaches, Vadim Naumov and Evgenia Shishkova, and Jin Han, the mother of Jinna, and Christine Lane, the mother of Spencer.
Alan Kulwicki was a rising star in NASCAR. He won the 1986 Rookie of the Year and four years later took home the drivers’ championship over Bill Elliott. In April 1993, Kulwicki, two Hooters executives and the pilot of the jet they were on crashed on approach to landing in Tennessee. The NTSB said the pilot failed to clear the engine inlet of ice.
Davey Allison, the son of legendary NASCAR driver Bobby Allison, was a rising star in NASCAR when the helicopter he was piloting crashed in the infield at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama. The crash occurred in July 1993 – just a few months after Kulwicki died. The NTSB blamed the crash on Allison’s inexperience as a pilot.
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Payne Stewart was an 11-time PGA Tour winner, who had won the U.S. Open twice and the PGA Championship once during his golf career. He died in 1999 when his private plane lost cabin pressure, killing all four passengers and both pilots. The plane continued on autopilot until it ran out of fuel and crashed in a field in South Dakota.
Roberto Clemente played 18 years in the majors for the Pittsburgh Pirates and won two World Series championships. But his humanitarian efforts are what took him from a terrific player to an all-time great. He was bringing emergency supplies to the survivors of a Nicaraguan earthquake when the overloaded plane crashed on takeoff from Puerto Rico on New Year’s Eve in 1972.
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Nearly 40 members of the Marshall Thundering Herd football team were among the 75 killed when Southern Airways Flight 932 crashed into a hill in West Virginia in 1970. Five coaches, seven staffers and 21 boosters were also on board as the team was returning home from a game against East Carolina.
Thurman Munson was on his way to becoming the next great New York Yankees catcher. He won the 1970 American League Rookie of the Year and the MVP in 1976. He was named the team’s first captain since Lou Gehrig. He bought a plane so he could fly it back to Ohio, his home, on his off days. He was practicing landings when he clipped a tree on the approach to Akron-Canton-Regional Airport in 1979. Munson was paralyzed on impact and suffocated in a fire that ensued.
January 2020 had one of the darkest and most unfathomable moments in sports. Kobe Bryant, his daughter and seven others were on a helicopter flying back from a basketball tournament in California when the aircraft crashed outside of Los Angeles. The NTSB blamed the pilot for the cause of the crash.
Rocky Marciano left the boxing world undefeated and a champion when he decided to retire from the sport in 1956. He died in August 1969 when an inexperienced pilot crashed into a tree in bad weather three miles from an Iowa airfield.
Roy Halladay was one of baseball’s mythical pitchers, playing for the Toronto Blue Jays and Philadelphia Phillies. He’s one of the few pitchers to throw a no-hitter in the postseason. In 2019, Halladay crashed a sport plane he had purchased into the Gulf of Mexico. The NTSB said he was impaired by high levels of amphetamines and was attempting extreme aerobatic stunts when he lost control of the aircraft.
New York Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle was killed in 2006 when the small plane he owned was blown by strong winds into a residential building in New York City.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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