A medical transport jet with a child patient, her mother and four others aboard crashed into a Philadelphia neighbourhood shortly after takeoff on Friday evening, exploding in a fireball that engulfed several homes.
All six people aboard were from Mexico.
The child had been treated in Philadelphia for a life-threatening condition and was being transported home to Mexico, according to Shai Gold, Jet Rescue Air Ambulance spokesperson. The flight’s final destination was Tijuana after a stop in Missouri.
Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro said at a news conference late Friday that officials expect fatalities in this “awful aviation disaster.”
“We know that there will be loss,” he said.
The plane was registered in Mexico. Jet Rescue is based in Mexico and has operations both there and in the US.
The crash came just two days after the deadliest US air disaster in a generation. On Wednesday night, an American Airlines jet carrying 60 passengers and four crew members collided in midair in Washington, DC, with an Army helicopter carrying three soldiers. There were no survivors in that crash.
Over Philadelphia, a doorbell camera captured footage of the plane plunging in a streak of white and exploding as it hit the ground near a shopping mall and major roadway.
“All we heard was a loud roar and didn’t know where it was coming from. We just turned around and saw the big plume,” said Jim Quinn, the owner of the doorbell camera.
The crash happened less than 4.8 kilometres from Northeast Philadelphia Airport, which primarily serves business jets and charter flights.
The plane, a Learjet 55, quickly disappeared from radar after taking off from the airport at 6:06 pm and climbing to an altitude of 487 metres. It was en route to Springfield, Missouri, and registered to a company operating as Med Jets, according to the flight tracking website Flight Aware.
President Donald Trump posted on social media platform Truth Social it was “so sad” to see the crash.
“More innocent souls lost,” he said. “Our people are totally engaged.”
A continuous stream of police vehicles and fire trucks initially poured into the scene, taking over business parking lots as emergency responders to the crash and fire directed people away and set up a perimeter stretching blocks in each direction.
Within about an hour, the cry of sirens and shouted orders had faded into relative quiet at the edges of the closed-off area, and darkness settled in as drivers passing by peered out trying to see what was happening.
The plane crashed in a busy intersection near Roosevelt Mall, an outdoor shopping center in the densely populated neighbourhood of Rhawnhurst.
One cell phone video taken by a witness moments after the plane crashed showed a chaotic scene with debris scattered across the intersection.
A wall of orange glowed just beyond the intersection as a plume of black smoke quickly rose into the sky and sirens blared.