“We’re not going to make the runway, we’ve lost both engines,” the pilot of a small twin-engine jet that took off from Columbus radioed just before crashing onto a busy Florida highway near Naples on Friday afternoon.
Authorities reported that at least two people on board have died.
The small Bombardier Challenger 600 had five people on board when it took off from Ohio State University’s airport at 12:30 p.m. Friday on its way to the Naples Airport. It was scheduled for a subsequent departure to Fort Lauderdale, said Robin King, the director of communication with The Naples Airport Authority.
Authorities haven’t yet identified who was on the plane, which crashed onto southbound Interstate 75 at about 3:10 p.m, destroying at least one vehicle in a fiery explosion, roughly 4.7 miles from the airport. Officials at Ohio State said the aircraft was not affiliated with the university.
Friday night, the Hop-a-Jet charter company released a statement saying it had “received confirmed reports of an accident involving one of our leased aircraft near Naples” and that it would dispatch a team to the crash site. The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the incident.