Posted on 02/01/2025 8:26:57 AM PST by House Atreides
On January 31, 2025, a tragic air ambulance crash in Philadelphia claimed the lives of all six people on board. As investigators work to determine what went wrong, eyewitness videos have surfaced, capturing the aircraft’s final moments before impact.
In this video, Captain Steeeve carefully analyzes these crash videos alongside air traffic control (ATC) audio to understand the Learjet’s movements, possible mechanical issues, and pilot responses. By breaking down the footage, we aim to provide an idea of what happened in those critical final seconds.
Special thanks to our friends over at VASAviation for getting the audio from ATC so quickly. Their work is important to aviation, please go and support them
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
It is an example of the government of Mexico being responsible for its citizens because it has jurisdiction over them.
Imagine the U.S. returning two of its citizens who had violated immigration laws but retaining the parent's child simply because the child was born during the short stay of the parents.
Do you think the Mexican government would ignore the plea of the parents?
The jet was only in the air for 30 seconds, erupted into a fireball and fell in pieces spread out all over hell and gone. Some blew or blew it up from everything I heard last night. No one knows what hit it or blew it up. There was a trail of something behind it as it cracked up.
A sane and reasonable scenario. Since it seems the Lear may have stalled, I wonder if there was very heavy medical equipment in the rear, causing it to stall, and being only a minute up, no chance to recover.
Horrible situation.
Not to mention that the Lear 55 is a gas tank with wings.
One little spark in the wrong place with all those leaking Oxygen tanks.
KABOOM !
The linked youtube video gives a pretty good sense of the more likely scenarios given the lack of information at present.
Pretty clear that the plane suffered an aerodynamic stall, and with only a few hundred feet to the ground the pilots couldn’t recover.
The question is, what caused the stall? The presenter suggests the two most likely causes being an over-weight or incorrect tail-heavy load, or an engine failure. I suppose that some sort of catastrophic failure of the horizontal stabilizer could lead to a pitch-up and stall, but that seems much less likely.
That was my first thought.
A reporter described it as a fireball from the sky, but it looked like more of a smoke trail to me. It came in at such a steep dive angle to indicate that it was probably totally out of control.
Shot down by a MANPADS?
Ever seen a Learjet take off? They are among the most aggressive climbers on take off that you'll see, stalling at that point would not be good. JMHO
“Shot down by a MANPADS?”
Of course it’s all speculation, but I doubt it. There is precedent for crashes of this sort due to either a stall or loss of a control surface. Alaska 261 is a notable example, immediate steep dive caused by a mechanical failure that caused the stabilizer to move to an extreme nose down position.
Or it could be a stall that abruptly rolled the aircraft to one side and caused an unrecoverable dive. My guess is it’s something of that sort.
From the near vertical descent, it sure looks like a stall. I wonder if the pilot was too aggressive at attempting to get above the cloud deck and just stalled. And from the videos, I do not believe it was on fire, I believe it was the landing light in the fog and that made it look similar to a fire ball.
No explosion in mid-air. The plane comes out of the clouds with its lights on. That is why it “appears” in the middle of the sky.
Doubtful there are geese flying in the heavy rain that was happening.
The video has a logical explanation of what happened.
1500 feet seems kinda high for geese.
I read somewhere long ago a flock was sighted in the high 20K feet levels.
If they’re migrating a long distance, they go pretty high. I would think that they’re at their winter destinations, and not ready to come as far north as Philly. Could be wrong. Around here, there are year-round residents separating out in pairs, to nest.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.