Stunt pilot Warren Cilliers died in a crash Saturday, Nov. 8, 2025. | St. Augustine Airport Facebook
Published on November 10, 2025 at 11:46 am
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A St. Augustine stunt pilot who was beloved in the local aviation community died Saturday when his plane crashed at Keystone Airport.
A social media post by the St. Augustine Airport identified the pilot as 46-year-old Warren Cilliers, “an exceptional aerobatic pilot, talented mechanic, and dear friend to so many in the aviation community.”
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Patty Wagstaff, a stunt pilot who runs a flight school in St. Augustine, was friends with Cilliers.
Wagstaff said Cilliers loved doing competition flights, and he was a big part of the flight community. She also said that he has a teenage son.
The cause of the crash is not known.
Wagstaff said the crash came as a shock because of Cilliers’ track record.
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“He is the most conservative, most safety-conscious guy, and I can’t help but think it wasn’t a physical issue,” Wagstaff said. “I know he just came off a long trip overseas. … I’m convinced from what I hear from other people that were there, he wasn’t showing off, he wasn’t doing anything wrong, and he didn’t recover for some reason.”
Pilot loses control
Local aviation pilot and lawyer Ed Booth, who has decades of flight experience, said that crashes like this do happen, with about 400 small aircraft fatalities a year in the U.S.
He tracked the flight path for the single-seat EA-330, a world champion aerobatic aircraft.
Booth said the situation started a little after 10:30 a.m. The pilot was flying the plane in a rectangular shape, which demonstrates control of the aircraft.
“It shows a pilot who is in perfect control of his airplane and then — for reasons we don’t understand at the moment — loses control,” Booth said.
Booth said the plane rapidly went up 2,700 feet, then to 3,800 feet. Then it suddenly dropped down to 1,000 feet all in the span of 2 minutes.
“He’s 1,000 feet off the ground, going downhill at 13,440 feet per minute. That is not controlled flight,” Booth said.
Booth said the rapid, scary descent left his jaw dropped. He also said that the plane had been flown often in October, and the pilot pre-planned his appearance at the Keystone Airport.
Records show scheduled activity there from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday — another reason Booth said this pilot was taking proper safety precautions.
“Even in that airplane, something happened,” Booth said.
Booth said he expects the investigation to take a year or more before a cause of the crash is determined.
This story was produced by News4Jax, a Jacksonville Today news partner.
