PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A medical transport jet slammed into a Philadelphia neighborhood about 30 seconds after taking off on Friday, erupting in a fireball and engulfing several homes in fire. Two people were on board, the Federal Aviation Administration said.
Mayor Cherelle Parker said Wednesday night at a news conference that information on fatalities wasn’t immediately known but several homes and vehicles had been damaged.
“This is still an active scene under investigation,” she said.
A doorbell camera captured footage of the plane plunging in a streak of white and exploding as it hit the ground near a shopping mall and major roadway. The crash came just two days after the deadliest U.S. air disaster in a generation.
“All we heard was a loud roar and didn’t know where it was coming from. We just turned around and saw the big plume,” said Jim Quinn, the owner of the doorbell camera.
The crash happened less than 3 miles from Northeast Philadelphia Airport, which primarily serves business jets and charter flights.
The plane, a Learjet 55, quickly disappeared from radar after taking off from the airport at 6:06 p.m. and climbing to an altitude of 1,600 feet. It was en route to Springfield, Missouri, and registered to a company operating as Med Jets, according to the flight tracking website Flight Aware.
On Wednesday night, an American Airlines jet carrying 60 passengers and four crew members collided in midair in Washington, D.C., with an Army helicopter carrying three soldiers. There were no survivors in that crash.
Gov. Josh Shapiro said he is offering all “Commonwealth resources as they respond to the small private plane crash in Northeast Philly.”
A continuous stream of police vehicles and fire trucks initially poured into the scene, taking over business parking lots as emergency responders to the crash and fire directed people away and set up a perimeter stretching blocks in each direction. Within about an hour, the cry of sirens and shouted orders had faded into relative quiet at the edges of the closed-off area, and darkness settled in as drivers passing by peered out trying to see what was happening.
The plane crashed in a busy intersection near Roosevelt Mall, an outdoor shopping center in the densely populated neighborhood of Rhawnhurst.
One cell phone video taken by a witness moments after the plane crashed showed a chaotic scene with debris scattered across the intersection. A wall of orange glowed just beyond the intersection as a plume of black smoke quickly rose into the sky and sirens blared.
Michael Schiavone, 37, was sitting at his home in Mayfair, a nearby neighborhood, on Friday when he heard a loud bang and his house shook. He said it felt like a mini earthquake and when he checked his home security camera footage, he said it looked like a missile was coming down.
“There was a large explosion, so I thought we were under attack for a second,” he said.
The plane’s owner, Jet Rescue, provides global air ambulance services. The company, based in Mexico, flew baseball hall of famer David Ortiz to Boston after he was shot in the Dominican Republic in 2019 and was involved in transporting patients critically ill with COVID-19.
A message seeking comment was left with Jet Rescue’s U.S. headquarters in Boca Raton, Florida.
The FAA said the National Transportation Safety Board will lead the investigation. The NTSB, which investigates air crashes, said it was gathering information about the crash.
Story by Michael Sisak and Matt Rourke, Associated Press. Associated Press writers Rio Yamat, Hallie Golden, and Josh Cornfield contributed to this report.
