PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — A Philadelphia plane crash expert says the medical transport jet crash in Northeast Philadelphia on Friday is unusual for a couple of reasons.
All six people aboard the plane, including the pediatric patient, were from Mexico. The child had been treated in Philadelphia for a life-threatening condition and was being transported home, according to spokesperson Shai Gold of Jet Rescue Air Ambulance, which operated the flight.
The patient and her mother were on board along with four crew members. The flight’s final destination was to have been Tijuana after a stop in Missouri.
Gold said this was a seasoned crew and everyone involved in these flights goes through rigorous training.
“When an incident like this happens, it’s shocking and surprising,” Gold told The Associated Press. “All of the aircraft are maintained, not a penny is spared because we know our mission is so critical.”
Arthur Wolk was an aviation attorney for 58 years, and for 52 of those years he was also a pilot. He’s familiar with Northeast Philadelphia Airport, where his plane is based.
“It's got long runways. It's got excellent facilities for instrument approaches and instrument departures. So, the airport is well equipped for airplanes like a [Learjet 55] and lots of other jet airplanes that regularly use the airport,” Wolk said Friday.
He says it’s not just the fact that the plane crashed, but the way it fell, that tells him something unusual happened to that plane when it took off.
“I think this accident is unusual in the sense that most aircraft of this type don't come out of the sky like this one did,” Wolk said.
“Obviously, there was a pitch control malfunction of some sort — that's also very unusual. And with two pilots aboard, one or more of which had to be type-rated in the airplane — that means trained and tested. Obviously, whatever happened, happened suddenly, right after takeoff, and overcame the ability of these two pilots to be able to solve the problem.”
The plane was a Learjet 55, a small but fairly sizable twin-jet aircraft, Wolk said.
“About two minutes after takeoff, the airplane was seen on a doorbell camera to be descending at a very, very rapid rate — I'd estimate maybe 4,000 feet a minute — and in about a 45-degree angle. So this airplane was clearly out of control at the time.”
Wolk says there must have been some kind of malfunction in the aircraft that caused it to pitch down like that.
“That could be a runaway trim, which is used to get the pressures off of the flight controls,” Wolk suggested. “It could have been a malfunction of the autopilot that the pilots could not cope with. It could be some malfunction of one of the actuators on the elevators that control the pitch.”
Whatever happened, says Wolk, “that is not a normal descent for any aircraft not doing aerobatics.”