Pilots heard panicked screams break over the radio as two light planes collided mid-air, causing one to crash and kill both people on board – with their bodies left so mangled that they have not yet been identified.
The Cessna 172S and a Lancair 360 MK II, a tiny ‘experimental’ two-seat plane, slammed into each other on approach to Marana Airport in Arizona.
The Lancair plummeted to the ground and was destroyed, killing the pilot and one passenger, while the instructor on the Cessna heroically landed safely.
The Marana Police Department said the pilot and passenger had not yet been positively identified, and it would ‘take some time’ to do so.
Thick plumes of black smoke filled the air moments after it went down at 8.29am on Wednesday, as emergency vehicles rushed to the crash site.
A witness on the ground blamed the Lancair pilot, claiming they cut in front of the Cessna and had their tail wing sliced clean off by its propeller.
‘The guilty plane was a homebuilt called a Lancair 4, which overtook and sideswiped the Cessna on the right side, severing the Lancair’s left [tail] wing, doing a half roll to the left and landing inverted in the ditch to the left of the runway,’ Jerry Witt said.
‘The propeller was the only damage on the 172.’
A Lancair 360 MK II, a tiny ‘experimental’ two-seat plane, was reduced to smoldering rubble when it crashed at Marana Airport near Tucson on Wednesday morning
The Cessna 172S and a Lancair 360 MK II slammed into each other on approach to the runway, slicing off the Lancair’s tail wing and sending it spinning to the ground
Witt said the Cessna was on a training flight and the instructor was able to limp the damaged plane around and on to the runway.
‘It was a miracle that the Cessna pilots (an instructor and her student) weren’t also killed,’ he said.
‘The instructor made a split second decision to try and keep her plane flying and came back around and landed.’
Another pilot who said he was in the air nearby during the crash shared the final seconds of radio traffic.
‘I heard the Lancair pilot make a radio call seconds before the collision saying, ‘Going around Runway 12 Again”,’ he said.
‘Just seconds after that radio call you hear someone screaming and yelling mayday and the [Cessna] declaring the emergency saying they were going to turn around and land on Runway 30.’
The pilot said he spoke to the Cessna instructor afterwards and was told her version of how the crash happened.
The Cessna 172S was on a training flight and the instructor was able to limp the damaged plane around and on to the runway
The only damage to the plane, witnesses said, was its propeller
The scene of the runway moments after the crash, taken by a witness on the ground
‘They did a stop and go and as they were climbing their prop hit the Lancair as it was flying over the the runway. Low wing/high wing scenario,’ he said.
‘The flight instructor in the Cessna was about to make a call and right before she could tell the Lancair pilot “do you see us?”, their propeller caught the end of the Lancair’s elevator (tail wing) which caused it to spiral to the ground.’
The pilot said he helped the shaken Cessna instructor navigate as she made it safely back to the ground after the collision.
The Lancair hit the ground with such force that the tiny plane was reduced to smoldering wreckage strewn across the desert.
The tiny plane, registered in Rio Vista, California, has been flying since 2001 and won its owner an award for its construction.
It was not confirmed whether the registered owner was on board when the plane crashed.
Other pilots discussing the crash on social media said Marana was an extremely busy airport where pilots needed to have their wits about them.
They described several near-misses they experienced in recent years. Figured showed there there were seven in the past decade including two last year.
Marana, like many small airfields, has no air traffic control tower, and relies on pilots maintaining visual contact with other planes and communicating on Common Traffic Advisory Frequency radio.
Construction of one is planned, but not until 2027 after it was delayed by the Covid pandemic.
A thick plume of smoke could be seen over the area after the crash at 8:29am local time
Authorities said the collision involved a Lancair 360 MKII (left) and a Cessna 172S (right, both aircraft seen in stock pictures)
The airport serves as a general aviation reliever airport for Tucson International, which is about 30 miles away.
Marana is home to more than 260 aircraft and has upwards of 90,000 takeoffs and landings every year, according to its website.
AeroGuard, a flight training school that owns the Cessna and employed the instructor, expressed its condolences.
‘We are aware of the mid-air collision involving two of our pilots and a separate plane over the Tucson, AZ area. Our pilots were not injured,’ it said.
‘We are deeply saddened by the two fatalities from this tragic accident, and our thoughts and prayers are with their families and loved ones during this difficult time.’
The accident brings the total number of incidents recorded by the NTSB this year to 98, 14 of them fatal.
This was far fewer than the 173 in the first two months of last year, including 31 fatal crashes.
The number of deaths is greatly inflated by the mid-air collision between American Airlines Flight 5342 and a Black Hawk army helicopter at Reagan National Airport in DC on January 29, which killed 67 people.
That crash, the first fatal commercial airline disaster in the US in 23 years, incited public panic towards air travel and was followed by several other incidents.
The collision was days after a Delta plane crash landed in Toronto and flipped upside down, causing several serious injuries but no deaths.
Just a week before the Toronto crash, a private jet owned by Motley Crue singer Vince Neil veered off a runway at Scottsdale Airport and crashed into another plane, leading to the death of the pilot
The repeat crashes come after one of the worst aviation disasters in modern American history on January 29, when an American Airlines passenger jet crashed into an Army Black Hawk helicopter and killed all 67 people aboard both aircraft
Just a week before the Toronto crash, a private jet owned by Motley Crue singer Vince Neil veered off a runway at Scottsdale Airport in Arizona and crashed into another plane.
The pilot in that incident lost their life, while the rocker’s girlfriend was hospitalized.
The crash was preceded by another aviation disaster when a small plane carrying 10 people vanished off flight radars off the coast of Alaska on February 7.
The aircraft was later discovered crash-landed 34 miles southeast of its intended destination of Nome, Alaska, with all 10 people aboard found dead inside.
On January 31, an air ambulance carrying six people fell from the skies over Pennsylvania and crashed into a residential area.
The crash resulted in the death of all six on board and a seventh on the ground. The deceased included a young girl who had just received life-saving surgery and was on her way home to Tijuana, Mexico.
