The Scottsdale Airport in Arizona was closed Monday afternoon after a business jet owned by Mötley Crüe singer Vince Neil—who was not on board—veered off the runway into a parked aircraft, killing one person and hospitalizing three others, in what appears to be the latest deadly aviation accident in the United States.
Scottsdale Fire Department firefighters work on a crashed Learjet at Scottsdale Airport after it ... [+]
The incident occurred around 2:39 p.m. MST when a Learjet arriving from Austin, Texas veered off the runway after landing and collided with a parked Gulfstream 200 plane.
Kelli Kuester, the Scottsdale Airport’s aviation planning and outreach coordinator, told reporters that “it appears that the left main [landing] gear failed upon landing,” resulting in the accident.
According to Scottsdale Fire Department Captain Dave Folio, one person was killed in the accident and three others who were injured—including two in critical condition—were taken to local medical facilities.
Folio said the fire department was still working to recover the body of the person killed in the collision.
Kuester said the airport’s runway will be closed “for the foreseeable future.”
The National Transportation Safety Board is taking over the investigation of the collision as of Monday evening.
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The Learjet which veered off the runway is owned by heavy metal band Mötley Crüe’s lead singer Vince Neil, but Neil was not onboard the aircraft at the time of the incident. The band’s social media handles shared a statement from Neil’s representative who said two pilots and two passengers were onboard the Learjet at the time of the incident. “Mr. Neil's thoughts and prayers go out to everyone involved, and he is grateful for the critical aid of all first responders assisting today,” the statement added. In a now deleted post accompanying the statement, the band had said Vince’s girlfriend and her friend were on board the plane and “suffered injuries, albeit not life-threatening.” The deleted post also mentioned that pilot of the plane was killed in the crash and added“Mötley Crüe will announce a way to help support the family of the deceased pilot – stand by for an announcement very soon.”
The Scottsdale Airport, a corporate jet facility, is not accessible to commercial airline flights and is nine miles north of downtown Scottsdale, according to its website. About 166,000 takeoffs and landings were made at the airport last year. The Monday plane crash is the latest major deadly aviation incident in the U.S. within the last two weeks. In late January, a commercial plane crashed into a military helicopter during its descent into Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, killing 67 people. The collision is still under investigation as black boxes from both aircraft were successfully recovered early this month. Just two days after the collision at Reagan airport, seven people were killed in a Philadelphia plane crash that injured more than a dozen people on the ground. A cause for the crash has not yet been named by officials.
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