On Friday evening, a Learjet 55 aircraft crashed in northeastern Philadelphia, killing all six people on board. The pilots, Alan Montoya and Jesús Juárez, were at the controls when the plane crashed on Cottman Avenue. Mexican authorities identified the pilots on Saturday.
Montoya and Juárez had been flying a young girl, who had received “life-saving care” at a Philadelphia hospital, along with her mother, back to Mexico. The flight took off from Northeast Philadelphia Airport at 6:06 pm, with plans to make a stop at Springfield-Branson National Airport in Missouri before heading to Tijuana, Mexico. However, the plane crashed just minutes after takeoff.
Hours before the fatal accident, Juárez posted a photo on Facebook from inside the plane, featuring a framed image of an airplane and the call letters for Northeast Philadelphia Airport. “Now if I went all the way home to the… Far away…” he wrote in the post.
Fatalities and Crew Information
All six people on board were Mexican citizens. One of the crew members was identified as Dr. Raul Meza, a doctor from XE Médica Ambulancia. He had worked with the air ambulance company that operated the flight before.
The crash caused one death on the ground and injured 19 others, in addition to property damage. The Learjet 55 was owned by Jet Rescue Air Ambulance, which is based in Mexico.