10-Passenger Plane Crashes, Killing 2

On Friday, around 11:00 a.m. (2:00 p.m. Eastern Time), north of the airport in Van Nuys, California, a 10-passenger business jet went down. Officials report that the only two people who were aboard were killed. Apparently the pilot had reported trouble both before and after takeoff. The plane was headed for Long Beach, but crashed before reaching its destination. According to the flight plan and preliminary information available, the flight was merely a "positioning flight" between Van Nuys and Long Beach--in other words, the purpose of the flight was simply to move the plane from one location to another.

It is not certain yet exactly what was wrong with the plane that caused it to crash, but the pilot had signaled back that something was wrong. According to Ian Gregor of the Federal Aviation Administration, a report to the CNN affiliate KABC was that the plane had an on-board emergency and was actually headed back to the airport. Stacy Geere, a spokeswoman for the Van Nuys airport, said the pilot had called back with "some difficulties before and just after takeoff." In response to whatever difficulty was going on, the pilot had turned the plane back, but went down approximately a half mile north of the runway where it could have landed.

A search done by the tail number of the plane (N-77215), revealed that the business jet was registered under the corporation Monnchild Aviation LLC. The agency reported that a National Transportation Safety Board investigator was headed to the site to do further investigation on the Cessna Citation 525 jet. Also, officials of the FAA are investigating the nature of communication between the pilot who crashed and those in the airport control tower.

How common are plane crashes in the continental United States? Unfortunately, they happen more often than many people are aware, and--as in the case of today's crash near Van Nuys airport--sometimes occur when a plan is merely being moved from one location to another. The FAA makes it their aim to conduct thorough investigations of every crash and accident in order to instill safety practices that can help to prevent future similar crashes that can be due to any number of types of negligence, or overlooking of important safety precautions. More details on the cause of this crash and details of the communication between pilot and airport control personnel will be available later on.

(Tribute to www.cnn.com for much of the information in this article)