A small plane veered off the runway at Scottsdale Airport in Arizona on Monday afternoon after part of its landing gear failed, causing it to crash into a parked business jet on a tarmac, killing one person and injuring three others, the authorities said.
The crash happened at about 2:45 p.m., when a Learjet 35A that had taken off from Austin, Tex., landed and then collided with a larger Gulfstream 200 business jet that had been on the ramp, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The Learjet’s left main gear failed as it landed, said Kelli Kuester, the aviation planning and outreach coordinator for the Scottsdale Airport.
One person was dead at the scene, two others were taken to local trauma centers in critical condition and another was taken to a hospital in stable condition Capt. Dave Folio of the Scottsdale Fire Department said at a news conference. One person refused treatment.
All flights were paused and runways were shut down. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the episode.
Officials would not immediately release the names of the five people involved in the accident or say which plane they had been on.
This collision came after a series aviation disasters across the country in recent weeks.
In late January, a Black Hawk helicopter and an American Airlines jet collided outside Washington, killing all 67 people on board those flights. Seven people were killed after a plane crashed near a shopping center in Philadelphia on Jan. 31. Ten people were killed in another plane crash in Alaska last Thursday on its way to Nome, Alaska.
