Kyle Bailey on “Hannity” discussing Philly plane crash [Screenshot/Fox News/”Hannity”]

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Hailey Gomez

Former Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Safety Team representative Kyle Bailey said Friday evening on Fox News that the jet caught on camera crashing in northeastern Philadelphia appeared “100% out of control.”

Around 6:30 p.m. local time, videos surfaced showing a small jet crashing into a neighborhood in northeastern Philadelphia, with images and footage depicting the plane erupting into a fireball. The FAA confirmed the crash in a statement, identifying the aircraft as a Learjet 55 that had been departing from northeastern Philadelphia Airport en route to Springfield-Branson National Airport in Missouri.

On “Hannity,” Fox’s Sean Hannity began discussing the Learjet 55, adding that his pilot friends had described the aircraft as “a sports car in the air.” He then asked Bailey if this type of jet is different from the “average commuter jet.”

“That’s exactly right, Sean. You have to be ahead of that airplane at all times, or it will get control of you. That plane was doing in excess of 10,000 feet per minute rate of descent, and it didn’t even make it to 2,000 feet after takeoff,” Bailey said. “Right after takeoff, the controller was asking, calling for the airplane to respond. There was no response by the flight crew. There was no communication.”

“The controller was a little bit stumped in trying to make contact with the airplane, and that tells me that the pilot completely was consumed with whatever was going on, and from that rate of descent and from that airplane coming down like a missile, it looked like it could have potentially been at full power,” Bailey added. “It was just coming down there at a rate that really was unbelievable.”

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Bailey went on to say that the explosion was likely massive due to the “large quantity of jet fuel,” adding that he believed there was probably nothing the pilot “could have done” to prevent the incident.

“So from taking off for a flight of the duration of where it was going, that probably was very closely, fully loaded with fuel. So that huge fireball that we saw is the result of a large quantity of jet fuel, and that big, almost like — for lack of a better term — like a nuclear-like explosion is probably the jet fuel reflecting off that cloud base,” Bailey said.

“That’s why it looks a little bit strange, but there is no doubt that the plane was 100% out of control, and there was probably nothing that pilot could have done,” Bailey added. “Not even a 10-second mayday came out of that radio back to the control tower.”

The plane was reportedly on a medical assignment with four crew members and two passengers aboard, according to 6ABC. During a press conference around 8:30 p.m., Democratic Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker could not provide a fatality count. She instead asked residents “for prayers.”

The crash comes just days after a commercial plane collided with a military helicopter near Washington Reagan National Airport on Wednesday evening, killing all involved.

The incident is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and FAA.

A screen grab captured from a video shows a regional plane that collided in midair with a military helicopter and crashed into the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 29, 2025. Kennedy Center Cam/Anadolu via Getty Images

Squadron primarily used for transporting VIPs around D.C. was apparently familiarizing new pilot with area.

Wednesday night, shortly before 9pm ET, an American Airlines flight carrying 64 people was on its final approach to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport when it collided with an Army helicopter with three soldiers on board, about 400 feet off the ground, killing everyone on both aircraft.

The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk had departed from Fort Belvoir in Virginia with a flight path that cut directly across the flight path of Reagan National Airport

This final approach is probably the most carefully controlled in the world, as it it lies three miles south of the White House and the Capitol.

According to various media reports, military aircraft frequently train in the congested airspace around D.C. for “familiarization and continuity of government planning.”

Less than 30 seconds before the crash, an air traffic controller asked the helicopter, whose callsign was registered as PAT25, if he could see the arriving plane.

‘PAT25 do you see a CRJ? PAT 25 pass behind the CRJ,’ the air traffic controller said. A few seconds later, a fireball erupted in the night sky above Washington DC as the two aircraft collided.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued the following statement on X:

It seems that Blackhawks from the 12th Aviation Battalion out of Davison Army Airfield are primarily used for shuttling VIPs around the D.C. area. The following appears to be a helicopter from this battalion.

On the face of it, it strikes me as very imprudent to conduct training flights at night that cross the final approach to Reagan D.C. To me, the word “training” suggests a potential for making errors that an instructor is called upon to correct.

It also strikes me as very strange that Army Blackhawk helicopters operating in this airspace at night are not required to operate with bright external lights, especially when crossing the final approach to Reagan D.C.

Finally, though it’s nothing more than a vague intuition, it seems to me that there is something very strange about this disaster and the timing of it. I wonder if, for some reason, risk management of such training activities was impaired.

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