Federal investigators said five people were killed Sunday morning when two small planes, one carrying employees from military contractor BAE Systems, collided midair, crashed to the ground and caught fire as the two approached a San Diego airport. BAE’s U.S. headquarters are in Arlington, Va.
Wreckage fell into a nearby field, igniting a two-acre brush fire.
“It appears it was a very violent crash, as you can tell by both aircraft being in multiple pieces,” Cal Fire Division Chief Nick Schuler told reporters, according to Fox News. “Witnesses reported hearing the midair collision. They reported hearing the aircraft hit the ground. And we had numerous reports that there was fire in the area.”
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Both planes were attempting to land when the twin-engine Sabreliner jet, carrying four passengers, collided with a single-engine Cessna 172 over Brown Field Municipal Airport, near the U.S.-Mexico border, National Transportation Safety Board investigator Andrew Swick told KNSD-TV.
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The National Transportation Safety Board said BAE Systems was on a mission training flight at the time of the crash.
“BAE Systems was alerted this afternoon that a small aircraft carrying its employees collided with another,” BAE Systems said in a statement to news station, adding that its “employees and their families are our first priority and we are prepared to offer all our support.”
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Share this articleShareSwick said the Cessna’s pilot was on a cross-country trip.
By the time first-responders arrived, the planes were “on the ground in multiple pieces,” Schuler told reporters, according to CNN.
A California Highway Patrol officer, who was the first to arrive at the scene, radioed a dispatcher: “Debris is scattered everywhere.”
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There were no survivors. The victims’ names have not been released.
The planes collided about 2 miles from Brown Field, a former Naval auxiliary air station in San Diego’s Otay Mesa neighborhood. Today, the airport acts as a “reliever” facility to ease the load on the region’s international airport Lindbergh Field, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Sabreliner jet went down on a grassy slope and the Cessna crashed near the San Diego National Wildlife Refuge. Debris from the wreckage sparked a brush fire, which was quickly extinguished.
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A firefighter battling the blaze was transported to a nearby hospital with a heat-related injury, Schuler said.
The crash is under investigation by the FAA and the NTSB.
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