The company operating this Learjet (Jet Rescue Air) had another crash in Mexico about a year ago killing all 5 aboard. Company website:
https://www.jetrescueairambulance.com/
https://www.jetrescueairambulance.com/
Plane crash has occurred in Philidelphia; Jan 2025
- Thread starter JavierH19
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I confirmed this with other reports ( reference to the previous Jet Rescue crash in 2023 )
Pilot error, they landed long on a 9,000 long runway ( "light and variable winds" ...no tailwind ) and went off the end into a ditch and everyone was killed.
..."The airplane departed Toluca-Licenciado Adolfo López Mateos International Airport on a positioning flight (Ambulance) to Cuernavaca, carrying two doctors and two pilots. After landing on runway 20 at Cuernavaca Airport, the crew initiated the braking procedure but the airplane was unable to stop within the remaining distance. It overran, went down a steep embankment and crashed in bushes, bursting into flames. The airplane was totally destroyed by impact forces and a post crash fire and all four occupants were killed. It is believed that the airplane landed too far down the runway, causing the landing distance to be insufficient..."
There was another Learjet crash in Mexico that the NTSB helped out with that was blamed on "loss of control" but they could not determine what caused it ( lost control and went into a dive from 28,000 ....two pilots on board ). There was talk about the stabilizer causing it but the NTSB said there was no proof it caused the crash
Pilot error, they landed long on a 9,000 long runway ( "light and variable winds" ...no tailwind ) and went off the end into a ditch and everyone was killed.
..."The airplane departed Toluca-Licenciado Adolfo López Mateos International Airport on a positioning flight (Ambulance) to Cuernavaca, carrying two doctors and two pilots. After landing on runway 20 at Cuernavaca Airport, the crew initiated the braking procedure but the airplane was unable to stop within the remaining distance. It overran, went down a steep embankment and crashed in bushes, bursting into flames. The airplane was totally destroyed by impact forces and a post crash fire and all four occupants were killed. It is believed that the airplane landed too far down the runway, causing the landing distance to be insufficient..."
There was another Learjet crash in Mexico that the NTSB helped out with that was blamed on "loss of control" but they could not determine what caused it ( lost control and went into a dive from 28,000 ....two pilots on board ). There was talk about the stabilizer causing it but the NTSB said there was no proof it caused the crash
The latest report claim that an additional person has died and 19 are injured. Although that's bad 1 person dying on the ground is a lot less bad than I expected given that it crashed in a very populated area near a mall and many homes. Imagine if it hit the mall during the middle of the next day when it's full. It could have been much worse.
Some years ago there was a Mexican girl singer, (I think her name was Jeannie Rivera), who died with several others in a Lear Jet crash in Mexico. If I remember it went straight in like this one did. Totally non survivable.
I remember that one and the one earlier in 2008. I believe both were caused by loss of control but never found the exact cause.
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Thats the one.
Investigation
[edit]The investigation into the accident was carried out by the Mexican Directorate General of Civil Aeronautics (DGAC). Since the United States was the state of manufacture and registry of the aircraft, the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) sent an accredited representative to assist with the inquiry.
In December 2014, the DGAC issued its final accident report. The investigation was hampered by the fact that the flight data recorder was destroyed in the impact, and no information could be retrieved. The cockpit voice recorder was never found.
From the analysis of the recorded radar information, it was determined that the Learjet had experienced a sudden loss of control while climbing through 28,000 feet (8,500 m), leading to a nearly vertical high-speed nosedive. The angle of impact with terrain was estimated at 89°, and the impact speed higher than the aircraft's maximum operating speed.
Other flight crews that had previously flown on N345MC had reported occurrences of anomalous vibrations felt on the control column during cruise, leading the investigators to speculate that the sudden nosedive might have been the result of a failure in the horizontal stabilizer, although no hard evidence was found among the badly damaged parts of the system recovered from the wreckage.
Furthermore, the NTSB, after conducting laboratory analysis on the stabilizer's actuator, found no evidence of pre-existing damage or failure, and later issued a comment on the DGAC's findings that there was "no factual data that supports [the hypothesis of a horizontal stabilizer failure].
The report concluded that the probable cause of the accident was "loss of control of the aircraft for undetermined reasons." It was also established that the flight crew was in breach of local regulations regarding age limits and qualifications. The captain, 78, had exceeded the maximum age allowed for his role, while the co-pilot, 21, did not hold a valid type rating for the Learjet 25.
Looks like it hit nose first in the street. You're right that it could have been much worse.
MolaKule
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Good point.
Were the anti-collision lights, takeoff lights, and the nav lights still on?
Did the rain and fog "diffuse" those lights such that it gave the appearance the aircraft was on fire, OR, was the aircraft actually on fire as it nosedived?
From my perspective, it appears the aircraft was on fire as it nosedived, inferring a catastrophic event before the impact. I would think the "color" of the plane before ground impact might give a clue.
Hopefully, from the many videos that we have seen, those videos can be thoroughly analyzed by the NTSB to differentiate and to give an answer to the above.
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Haven't seen his channel before but Steve is very informative.
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Great points.
I am conflicted whether that glow was from the aircraft’s lights ( and the clouds make it seem brighter ) , or a fire.
I went back and forth one that one. I think you might be right about that.
If it was on fire, that would help explain why it came down so fast.
An explosion in the cargo area?
Curious what they were carrying also in the cargo area.
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I can’t see how a stall would cause it to be coming down around 11,000 feet per minute ( reports ) from the peak altitude it reached ( 1,400 feet ).
It departed controlled flight no higher than 1,400 feet above ground and was travelling extremely fast ( even 280 knots is fast given it didn’t climb above 1,400 and would have just started accelerating from initial climb speed after flap retraction ) and at a crazy high rate of descent, nose down.
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Aircraft landing lights are very bright and when we are holding short of the runway waiting for the aircraft on final to land, the glow from their landing lights can look like a bright glow as they approach the runway when the cloud layer is very low ( or fog ) at night.
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If it did stall, I don’t think it was because it was improperly loaded because the pilot would not have been so calm acknowledging the Towers request to contact departure when they were climbing through 1000 feet. They would have had problems controlling the aircraft probably right after take off if the C of G was that far out of limits due to being loaded incorrectly.
If the load shifted climbing out ( just after the last transmission to the Tower at 1300 feet ), I could more easily think that might have caused the stall if that’s what happened.
Did they retract the flaps prematurely?
One pilot was talking on the radio around the same altitude flap retraction occured but before the aircraft accelerated to the correct flap retraction speed.
Hopefully they get FDR and CVR data if it has it.
I don’t know about the stall possibility but , if it did, those things could have caused it.
It just came down to fast and high rate of descent from just 1300 feet to be have happened due to a stall in my opinion ( sure, if you recover with full thrust, 60 degrees nose down maybe, but ).
Edit: correction
If the load shifted climbing out ( just after the last transmission to the Tower at 1300 feet ), I could more easily think that might have caused the stall if that’s what happened.
Did they retract the flaps prematurely?
One pilot was talking on the radio around the same altitude flap retraction occured but before the aircraft accelerated to the correct flap retraction speed.
Hopefully they get FDR and CVR data if it has it.
I don’t know about the stall possibility but , if it did, those things could have caused it.
It just came down to fast and high rate of descent from just 1300 feet to be have happened due to a stall in my opinion ( sure, if you recover with full thrust, 60 degrees nose down maybe, but ).
Edit: correction
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GA is a different story since the aircraft are operated unsupervised and sometimes operated with known problems and are flown by pilots who sometimes overestimate their abilities and the capability of the aircraft they fly.
Add in exceeding the aircraft's maximum gross weight, especially piston twins (it'll be legal after an hour or two of fuel burn) as well as trying to stretch out the fuel to exhaustion and continuing into icing conditions or continuing into instrument conditions, rating or not, without any real experience and you have a summary of every cause of GA accidents.
A careful pilot who is honest with himself and willing to scrub his plans as conditions dictate can mitigate these risks.
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It's highly unlikely they will ever know for sure if it didn't have a CVR/FDR given the high speed it hit the ground and explosion.
Curious what the initial altitude clearance was on the SID ( Standard Instrument Departure ) because spatial disorientation is a lot worse when climbing like a rocket ( just over 3000 FPM ) and aggressively having to lower the nose to level off while you are thinking about a turn you were assigned involving a 50 degree heading change, at night in clouds.
I was thinking how slow the so called Russian meteor was going as compared to this plane, looked more like a rocket.
That would be crazy acceleration from the reported 1600 foot altitude they say it was at.
Can't wait for Mr Brown to talk about this one.
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The cockpit voice recorder is extraordinarily important in this particular crash.
The angle of the impact means that just about every part of the aircraft was completely destroyed. It’ll be very difficult to determine if there was a mechanical failure.
I do not think the aircraft is on fire, otherwise every UPS Van that drives by my ring camera at night would be on fire. I think it’s just the nature of doorbell cameras to show “bloom“ from bright lights when the background is dark.
However, when I see the flight parameters, as broadcast by ADS-B, I think this will turn out to be a spatial disorientation, a somatogravic illusion, very similar to that experienced by the crew on Atlas air 3591. I talked a lot about that kind of illusion in the thread on that crash. I recommend folks go back and read it.
The plane did not stall, the air speed steadily increased, and as the aircraft went nose down, airspeed increased rapidly. There was no abrupt change in pitch, or decrease in air speed, representing a stall, that would lead me to believe that the cargo had shifted or the airplane was outside of its center of gravity limits
This aircraft went into the cloud somewhere between four and 600 feet, while significantly nose up and at full power. The combination of pitch attitude, climb rate, and right hand turn can very easily create vestibular anomalies.
The climb rate on a Lear 55 is pretty good.
It is hard for people who have never experienced flight and instrument conditions to imagine how powerful the effect of a somatogravic illusion can be. But that effect is the reason that nearly every non-instrument rated pilot loses control of the airplane when they fly IMC.
The angle of the impact means that just about every part of the aircraft was completely destroyed. It’ll be very difficult to determine if there was a mechanical failure.
I do not think the aircraft is on fire, otherwise every UPS Van that drives by my ring camera at night would be on fire. I think it’s just the nature of doorbell cameras to show “bloom“ from bright lights when the background is dark.
However, when I see the flight parameters, as broadcast by ADS-B, I think this will turn out to be a spatial disorientation, a somatogravic illusion, very similar to that experienced by the crew on Atlas air 3591. I talked a lot about that kind of illusion in the thread on that crash. I recommend folks go back and read it.
The plane did not stall, the air speed steadily increased, and as the aircraft went nose down, airspeed increased rapidly. There was no abrupt change in pitch, or decrease in air speed, representing a stall, that would lead me to believe that the cargo had shifted or the airplane was outside of its center of gravity limits
This aircraft went into the cloud somewhere between four and 600 feet, while significantly nose up and at full power. The combination of pitch attitude, climb rate, and right hand turn can very easily create vestibular anomalies.
The climb rate on a Lear 55 is pretty good.
It is hard for people who have never experienced flight and instrument conditions to imagine how powerful the effect of a somatogravic illusion can be. But that effect is the reason that nearly every non-instrument rated pilot loses control of the airplane when they fly IMC.
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