SAN DIEGO — A private jet carrying six people crashed into a residential neighborhood near San Diego’s Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport early Thursday morning, ending a dangerous trip with a fiery crash. A music executive and his team were among the dead. Tragically, their lives were cut short by dense fog, broken airport equipment, and important choices made in a split second.
The Last Flight: A Sad End to a Cross-Country Trip
The Cessna 550 Citation had left Teterboro, New Jersey, on a long trip that would take it across the country and stop in Wichita, Kansas, on its way to San Diego. The pilot, who also owns the plane and works as a music agent, took off late Wednesday night after a sold-out show in New York City. He was going home late that night.
But as the plane got closer to its final stop, thick fog covered the airport and made it very hard to see. To make things even harder, the landing lights at the airport were out and a power surge had shut down the weather alert system. Even with these problems, the pilot decided to go ahead with the landing.
A pilot’s tough choice in dangerous conditions
Audio from the last few seconds of the flight shows the pilot arguing with air traffic control about the risks. He knew the weather and tools weren’t working, but he still chose to try landing at Montgomery-Gibbs, saying, “Doesn’t sound great, but we’ll give it a go.”
According to experts, this choice was very risky. Jeff Guzzetti, a former NTSB inspector, said that pilots have to check Notices to Airmen, which are official FAA notices about things like runway outages at airports. It’s not clear if the pilot looked over these warnings.
“Without runway lights, the right thing to do would have been to abort the landing and go to a different airport,” Guzzetti said. Instead, the plane missed its target and crashed into a neighborhood about two miles from the runway.
Damage in a peaceful neighborhood
It started a fierce fire and tore through power lines during the crash. The explosion and extreme heat woke up Ben McCarty and his family, who lived in the house that was hit. Neighbors helped them get out with their kids and pets because the fire blocked their normal escape routes.
McCarty said, “We used to love living under the flight path.” “From the porch, our kids would watch the planes fly by.” That’s where the plane hit now. I’m not sure if we can stay.
Even though only one house was destroyed, fire and rubble damaged other homes nearby. At least 100 people had to leave their homes while firefighters put out the fire and cleared the area.
A Sad Loss for the Music Scene
One of the people who died was 42-year-old music artist and plane owner Dave Shapiro. Shapiro helped to start Sound Talent Group and managed acts like Pierce The Veil, who had just played a big show in New York. Along with him, two young workers and a former band drummer also died.
Their untimely deaths are the latest in a worrying string of plane crashes this year, even though the government says flying is still one of the safest ways to travel.
As investigators look into the crash, there are still questions.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is in charge of the investigation. Over the next year, they will try to figure out what caused the crash. The pilots are tired from the long trip and the dangerous fog conditions are being looked at.
“This accident shows how dangerous it is to try to land in bad weather when airport systems aren’t working right,” Guzzetti said. “There were safe places for them to land at other airports.”
A community that was shaken
An area of San Diego is still reeling from the shock and confusion caused by the crash. People have lost their homes and families, and a flight path that used to be peaceful is now a painful memory of what happened.
As the investigation goes on, the community starts to recover from the day the skies over Montgomery-Gibbs turned dark. The goal is to find out what happened and stop similar accidents from happening again.
