A chartered jet carrying five people crashed on Interstate 75 near Naples, Fla., on Friday afternoon, exploding in flames and killing two people on board. The three other passengers were able to exit the plane before the explosion, according to officials.
The Bombardier Challenger 600 left Ohio State University Airport around 1 p.m. and was scheduled to land at Naples Airport before departing for Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport.
The business jet crashed into I-75 less than five miles away from the Naples Airport, around 3:15 p.m. ET, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The Collier County Sheriff’s Office confirmed that two people died in the crash. Spokesperson for the Naples Airport Authority, Robin King, did not know the conditions of the three survivors, according to CNN.
Pilot: “Okay, Challenger, Hop-A-Jet 823, lost both engines, emergency. I’m making an emergency landing.” Controller: “I’ve got an emergency. Clear to land Runway 23.” Pilot: “We’re clear to land but we’re not gonna make the runway. We’ve lost both engines.”
King said the airport lost communication with the plane just before the crash. “It was coming in for a landing,” she said. “We received word that it had possibly lost an engine, we have not confirmed that, then we lost contact.”
The cause of the dual-engine failure has yet to be determined. While a dual-engine failure is extremely rare — most planes have a “redundant” second engine for this reason — engine failures are generally caused by a physical obstruction, a mechanical failure, or a lack of fuel. Planes that lose engine power can still be steered to a landing, using their altitude as an energy source.
A witness to the jet’s crash-landing, Brianna Walker, was driving on I-75 when the plane flew in from behind her, according to CNN. She watched the aircraft clip the top of a pickup truck in front of her, contact the highway, and skid for about 30 feet before slamming into a concrete wall and soon bursting into flames.
The truck – its roof taken off by the contact – went into a median and flipped over, she said. The pickup’s driver walked out and “looked OK,” Walker said.
It seemed like the plane’s pilot was trying to land on the highway, Walker said. “It was unreal. Like a movie,” she said.
An explosion came from the plane about a minute after the crash, according to Walker and video she shared of the scene. The plane was already aflame and emitting thick, black smoke, the video shows. Motorists stopped to try to help in the moments after the crash, but the explosion that came afterward sent people running, Walker said.
Naples-area resident Jinny Johnson happened upon the crash just minutes after it took place, as she was driving north on I-75 at the time.
“All of a sudden I saw a lot of black smoke,” Johnson said. “It was pitch black. As I got closer, the smoke got a little lighter. And then I saw flames,” Johnson told Naples Daily News. Flames shot into the air, eating into the plane, and there was a damaged car sitting on the median, Johnson said.
Florida Highway Patrol troopers remained on the scene for several hours into Friday night. Northbound lanes of I-75 had reopened by 7:45 pm, but southbound lanes were closed as the investigation continued.
The purpose of the flight and its passengers remains unknown. King said, “We don’t have anybody here at the general aviation terminal waiting for them,” she said. “We don’t know who they are, the nature of the business. We don’t know why they are coming here.”
The flight was chartered through the Hop-a-Jet charter company, which released a statement Friday night saying it had “received confirmed reports of an accident involving one of our leased aircraft near Naples” and that it would dispatch a team to the crash site.
The crash is under investigation by the Federal Aviation Authority and the he National Transportation Safety Board. The names of the deceased — and of the survivors — have yet to be released to the public.