Preliminary flightpath analysis indicates the ambulance Learjet 55 which crashed in Philadelphia had climbed to about 1,500ft before steeply descending and striking the ground.
The aircraft’s flight from Northeast Philadelphia airport “lasted less than a minute”, said National Transportation Safety Board investigator-in-charge Ralph Hicks during a 1 February briefing.
Its high-energy impact spread pieces of wreckage over a wide area of a suburb about 2.5nm from the departure end of the airport’s runway 24, from where it took off on 31 January.
Hicks says the jet made a “a slight right turn, followed by a slight left turn” before the descent – although the inquiry has yet to establish whether this motion is relevant to the crash.
Philadelphia mayor Cherelle Parker, speaking on 1 February, said four crew members, a patient and a relative were on board the jet, and that the fatalities also include at least one person in a car.
City of Philadelphia managing director Adam Thiel says a number of individuals are in hospital, adding that there are “a lot of unknowns” about the identities and locations of people who were in the vicinity at the time of impact.
“We also have debris in a remote area where something happened with the aircraft,” he says, without elaborating.
The NTSB was not aware of any object falling from the aircraft at the time of its briefing – or the specifics of the remote debris claim – but encouraged the submission of video evidence from witnesses.
Chair Jennifer Homendy says there was no communication from the aircraft about problems before air traffic control lost contact with the flight.
Investigators have located the Learjet’s two engines, but are still searching for the cockpit-voice recorder.
“It could be intact but likely it is damaged, it may be fragmented,” Homendy states.
She is confident that, should this be the case, the NTSB has the engineering capabilities to carry out repairs. But while the recorder is valuable, she says, investigators can still continue and complete the inquiry without it.
