Shocking new dashcam video shows private jet crashing onto Florida highway
Harrowing new video has emerged of the moment a private jet slammed onto a busy Florida highway, killing the two pilots before a flight attendant and two passengers escaped from the burning wreckage.
The Bombardier Challenger 600, carrying five people, lost its two engines and crashed onto Interstate 75 around 3:15 p.m. Friday while trying to land at the nearby Naples airport.
Dashcam video shows it descending rapidly over the highway as cars continue driving in the same direction — before it suddenly crashes and erupts in a ball of flames.
Cars are seen approaching the scene and then pulling over as a cloud of black smoke billows from the aircraft.
“I was wondering, ‘What is that?’” Miami trucker Alfonso del Nodal told NBC Miami of his dashcam footage. “Then I realized it was a plane coming down, and then in a matter of seconds, it crashed.”
Del Nodal said he pulled over and tried to help.
“But an explosion came and first thing that came to my mind was 9/11,” he told the outlet. “Then we heard, ‘Bam! Bam!’ and I saw three people get out.”
Killed in the crash were Capt. Edward Daniel Murphy, 50, and co-pilot Frederick Hoffman, 65, the Collier County Sheriff’s Office said.
Crew member Sydney Ann Bosmans, 23, and passengers Aaron Baker, 35, and Audra Green, 23, were captured in another video escaping from the burning plane, which belonged to Fort Lauderdale-based Hop-A-Jet Worldwide Charter.
They were taken to a local hospital for their injuries. Their conditions were not immediately available.
“Yes! Our pilots! Our pilots!” a woman is heard shouting back in the footage. When asked if the pilots were alive, the frantic woman replied: “I don’t know. I don’t know much else.”
In a chilling audio recording, Murphy calmly told an airport controller about losing the engines just moments before the disaster.
Passing motorist Kyle Cavaliere shouted at the survivors to see if anyone was still in the plane.
“Hop-A-Jet 823, lost both engines, emergency,” he said. “I’m making an emergency landing. We’re clear to land but we’re not going to make the runway. We’ve lost both engines.”
Witnesses said the wing clipped a car, dragged it, and slammed into a wall along the highway.
The plane, which had taken off from an airport at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, was scheduled to land in Naples when Murphy contacted the tower about the emergency.
An OSU rep said the plane was not affiliated with the university, and had no further information about it. The aircraft had been scheduled to fly back to Fort Lauderdale on Friday afternoon.
