Small aircraft crashes in neighbourhood

A small plane with six aboard has crashed into several buildings in north-east Philadelphia, setting homes and vehicles ablaze, and injuring people on the ground.

The jet was on a medical transport mission on Friday evening and was carrying four crew members, a child patient and the patient’s escort, Jet Rescue Air Ambulance, the medical aircraft company, told Reuters and other US media.

“We know that there will be loss,” Pennsylvania Gov Josh Shapiro said during a news conference at the scene of the crash, calling it an “awful aviation disaster”.

Emergency crews rushed to the scene during evening rush hour, as residents crowded streets that were littered with fiery debris and pieces of the aircraft. Many described a chaotic scene with injured people running and a neighbourhood block on fire.

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker said city officials do not know the number of fatalities, but the city is “asking for prayers for anyone and everyone that may have been affected”.

“If you see debris, call 911, don’t touch anything,” she told city residents.

The crash happened just blocks from the Roosevelt Mall, a three-story shopping centre in a densely populated part of the Pennsylvania city.

The area where the crash occurred is filled with terraced housing and shops.

Disturbing videos of the incident online show the plane coming down quickly and sparking a huge fireball that rocketed into the sky.

Witnesses describes shrapnel from the crash damaging cars, and strewing burning debris into the streets. Photos of the aftermath of the incident show cars burned and mangled in the streets as more fires are ablaze on the sidewalk.

The plane, a Learjet 55, took off from the Northeast Philadelphia Airport about 18:30 local time and crashed less than four miles (6.4km) away, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The FAA said in a statement that the flight was en-route to Springfield-Branson National Airport in Missouri. At first, the agency said two people were on the plane but later revised that to six.

According to data on FlightAware, a flight tracking website, the plane was operated by a company called Med Jets, and had arrived in Philadelphia from Florida less than four hours earlier.

The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) are investigating.

In a statement, President Donald Trump said his administration was “totally engaged”.

“So sad to see the plane go down in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. More innocent souls lost,” he said.

Weather forecasts in the area show it’s been a cloudy and rainy evening with winds measured around 10 to 20 mph.

One witness told local media that the explosion “lit up the whole sky”.

“I just saw a plane basically hit the building and it exploded. The sky lit up and I pulled over and basically, it was just real bad around here,” the witness told WPVI-TV, describing the crash as feeling like an earthquake.

Ryan Tian, 23, told The Philadelphia Inquirer said he was getting dinner when he saw a “massive fireball” that turned the sky orange.

“I thought we were getting attacked by something,” he said. As he saw people start to flee, he decided to get “outta there”.

The plane crash comes just two days after a much larger collision happened between a commercial jet and a military helicopter in Washington DC, where officials suspect all 67 people aboard both aircraft were killed.

It was the deadliest plane crash in the US in over 20 years.