A medical plane carrying six people including a sick child has crashed on a busy residential street in Philadelphia, bursting into flames and setting houses on fire. The Learjet 55, operated by Jet Rescue Air Ambulance, crashed about 30 seconds after takeoff from Northeast Philadelphia Airport on Friday evening. The child on board was receiving care in the US for a life-threatening condition and was returning home to Tijuana, Mexico. The girl was accompanied by her mother, a pilot, copilot, doctor and paramedic.

It comes two days after an American Airlines passenger jet collided with a Black Hawk helicopter in Washington, DC. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video. Up Next. Video aired on local TV stations showed the plane in a vertical nosedive before hitting the ground and exploding in a massive fireball. A spokesperson said: ‘We cannot confirm any survivors.’.

The plane took off just after 6pm ET and reached 1,650 feet before plummeting, according to data from ADS-B Exchange. The data shows the final speed of descent was 11,000 feet per minute. Witnesses said the aircraft’s rapid descent looked more like a missile. Michael Schiavone, 37, was sitting at his home in Mayfair, a nearby neighborhood, when he heard a loud bang and his house shook. ‘There was a large explosion, so I thought we were under attack for a second,’ he said.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro said at a news conference late Friday that officials expected fatalities in the ‘awful aviation disaster’. ‘We know that there will be loss,’ he said. The crash came just two days after the deadliest US air disaster in more than 20 years. 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 a post on the social media platform Truth Social, President Donald Trump said: ‘So sad to see the plane go down in Philadelphia. ‘More innocent souls lost,’ he added. ‘Our people are totally engaged.’. The Philadelphia crash was the second fatal incident in 15 months for Jet Rescue. In 2023, five crewmembers were killed when their plane overran a runway in the central Mexican state of Morelos and crashed into a hillside.

Shai Gold, who works on corporate strategy with Jet Rescue Air Ambulance, told CNN: ‘We are terribly shocked by this tragic turn of events. ‘This was a very seasoned crew. We are a leading air ambulance company. We fly 600 to 700 times a year.’. Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker told a press conference at the scene that several houses and cars had been engulfed in flames. She said the situation is ‘all hands on deck, that’s where we are right now’.

Officials said it was not clear what led to the crash. The weather was cold and rainy and with low visibility when the plane went down. The air ambulance had left Northeast Philadelphia Airport and was headed to Springfield-Branson National Airport in Missouri, about 1,100 miles to the southwest, the FAA said in a statement. A large fire and several fire trucks were visible at the crash scene in images broadcast by the Philadelphia CBS affiliate.

About two hours after the crash the fires were mostly out, according to TV images. The FAA said the National Transportation Safety Board will lead the investigation. The NTSB said an investigator arrived and more officials would be there Saturday. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk. For more stories like this, check our news page. Arrow MORE: Second body found in search for missing Hungarian sisters in Aberdeen.

Arrow MORE: The new £26,000,000,000 European airport set to hold 34 million passengers from 2032. Arrow MORE: Lucy Letby’s lawyers to unveil new evidence ‘which will clear her’. Never miss the biggest stories with breaking news alerts in your inbox. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Your information will be used in line with our Privacy Policy.