What's next in the Scottsdale plane crash investigation?

Yahoo

13-02-2025

As questions continue to swirl over how a routine flight into Scottsdale Airport ended in tragedy on Monday, an aerospace safety expert said the collision between two planes could have been much worse.
The crash garnered national headlines after a Learjet 35A — owned by Mötley Crüe lead singer Vince Neil, who was not a passenger — crashed into a parked Gulfstream G200 jet. Airport officials said the Learjet's landing gear appeared to fail, causing the plane to veer off the runway before striking the other jet, killing one and injuring several others.
One of the Learjet's pilots, Joie Vitosky, 78, was killed in the crash. Vitosky's daughter, Jana Schertzer, told The Arizona Republic that her father had been a pilot for 60 years, beginning with his service in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Cary Grant, an assistant professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University whom the Federal Aviation Administration recognized as a national safety leader, said the Scottsdale Fire Department's quick response to spray the plane down with fire-retardant foam potentially kept what was already a tragedy from becoming even worse.
'It's unfortunate that the brunt of the collision happened up in the nose of the airplane,' Grant said during a phone interview with The Republic. 'But had that not happened, and the aircraft fuel tanks had become ruptured, this could be a completely different story. Sparks and fuel don't go well together.'
While most accidents involving a pilot losing control of an aircraft midair are fatal, Grant said the fatality rate is lower if the pilot loses control of the plane while still on the ground, as the plane is typically traveling at a slower speed.
'It's unfortunate that they hit something,' Grant said. 'They had no control once that landing gear failed to maintain their directional control. They were just along for the ride at that point.'
Grant said he knew of no information suggesting this jet model was predisposed to landing gear or other issues.
'This airplane has been flying for almost 50 years,' Grant said. 'And with that amount of time and different operators all over the world, most of the accidents that have occurred are all different varieties of sources. So, this is a rather rare occurrence.'
Planes meant for general aviation — a term used for non-commercial flights that could involve everything from recreational flying to firefighting or search and rescue — must be inspected annually.
'That annual inspection requires — essentially, it gets taken apart,' Grant said. 'Every aspect of the airplane gets looked at.'
Grant said it would likely take one-to-two years before a full report on the cause of the crash would be available. National Transportation Safety Board investigations are exhaustive, he said.
The NTSB was expected to release a preliminary report within 30 days with basic facts about what happened, but details about what caused the landing gear to fail and whether it could have been prevented would likely not be available until the full report was published.
Grant said such investigations often involve multiple parties, including the manufacturers of the plane's engine and landing gear, air traffic controllers, weather experts and possibly airport staff, given the crash occurred during landing.
Officials would likely investigate the training records and backgrounds of the plane's pilots, maintenance records of the plane's landing gear and whether maintenance followed manufacturer recommendations.
'Sometimes — if they start looking at it and say, 'Well, everything was done correctly' — was there metal fatigue or some other issue that might have been latent and waiting to be the cause of the accident,' Grant said. 'Or was there a hard landing sometime in the past that might have contributed to this? So that's part of the reason why it takes so long for the results to come out — because they do a very thorough job.'
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: What's next in the Scottsdale plane crash investigation?