On Monday (February 10th) around 2:45 PM, a mid-sized business jet skidded off the runway and collided with another plane parked on the runway at Scottsdale Airport in Arizona, resulting in at least one fatality.
Scottsdale Fire Department spokesperson Dave Folio stated during a press conference that four other individuals were injured in the accident.
Folio mentioned that emergency personnel were working to extricate a victim trapped inside one of the planes, and the other three injured individuals were being transported to local hospitals for treatment.
Further details have not been provided by Folio yet, and the cause of the business jet veering off the runway remains unclear.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) stated in a release that the incident involved a Learjet 35A aircraft drifting off the runway and subsequently colliding with a Gulfstream 200 jet. The agency is currently conducting an investigation into the collision.
Due to the impact of this collision incident, the runway at the airport has been temporarily closed, with a reopening time to be announced later.
This incident comes at a time when aviation safety in the United States is under intense scrutiny.
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is investigating three recent aviation accidents that have occurred over the past few weeks, including: the mid-air collision between a United Airlines passenger plane and a military Black Hawk helicopter in the Washington D.C. area on January 29, resulting in 67 fatalities; the medical aircraft crash in Philadelphia on January 31, leading to 7 deaths; and the small passenger plane crash in Alaska on February 7, causing 10 fatalities.
(This article references reporting from Reuters)