Edgar Lee
On Friday (1/31), a medical transport jet carrying six people crashed into a Philadelphia neighborhood, setting several buildings and vehicles on fire. All six on board—two of whom were a child patient and her mother—as well as one person in a car were killed in the crash, and no less than 19 were injured on the ground. The fire was extinguished the same day.
All on board were from Mexico, with the plane’s final destination being Tijuana after the child patient was treated for an undisclosed life-threatening condition. This crash came only two days after a passenger jet collided with a military helicopter, killing 67.
The exact cause of the crash is still under investigation, but what is known is that the aircraft crashed within a minute after takeoff, reaching a peak altitude of 1,650 feet and rapidly descending from that point, with its downward speed being 11,000 feet per minute. The National Transportation Safety Board government agency recovered both the jet’s cockpit voice recorder and enhanced ground proximity warning system on Sunday (2/2), which could provide further information.
As is typical for bourgeois politicians and capitalists, they offered only their thoughts and prayers instead of action to prevent future crashes. Donald Trump posted online grieving the incident and praising the first responders on the scene. Similarly, Jet Rescue Air Ambulance, the operator of the flight, made a post “extend[ing] its heartfelt condolences and deepest sympathy,” but wrote nothing about preventing future incidents.
Jet Rescue is an international corporation that is based out of the U.S. but operates across all of North and South America, primarily Mexico. This is not the first crashed aircraft that Jet Rescue has been the operator behind, with a medical transport jet crashing while landing at Cuernavaca Airport in Mexico on November 1 2023, killing all four people on board. The cause was determined to be a botched landing and no preventative solutions have been adopted since.
Image: Photo of the jet, the Learjet 55 XA-UCI. Credit: Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives.
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