The Learjet 55 left runway 24 at Northeast Philadelphia Airport at 6:06 p.m. on January 31, 2025. It was on a medevac flight, bound for Tijuana with a planned fuel stop in Springfield, Missouri. It never got out of the neighborhood.
The jet climbed to 1,650 feet, dropped off radar, and hit the ground 40 seconds later, less than three miles from the airport. Flightradar24 showed its last reading at 1,275 feet and 242 knots. It descended at around 11,000 feet per minute. A doorbell camera caught it diving out of the cloud base, and then came a fireball behind a row of homes. The weather was light rain, overcast and fog, with a 30 mph gust recorded just before 6 p.m.
The people aboard
Six people were on the plane, all Mexican nationals. Pilot Alan Alejandro Montoya Perales had 9,200 flight hours, and co-pilot Josué Juárez 2,600. Dr. Raúl Meza Arredondo and paramedic Rodrigo López Padilla were caring for a young patient, Valentina Guzmán Murillo, who was traveling home to Ensenada with her mother, Lizeth Murillo Ozuna. Valentina had finished four months of treatment at Shriners Hospitals for Children in Philadelphia, and staff had held a farewell celebration for her that day.
All six died. The jet was operated by Jet Rescue Air Ambulance, and it was the company’s second fatal accident in 15 months.
On the ground
The wreckage struck buildings and vehicles near Roosevelt Mall at Cottman Avenue and Roosevelt Boulevard, in the Castor Gardens neighborhood. Fires spread to nearby row homes. Four homes were destroyed and 17 others damaged, along with several businesses. One person in a car was killed. Twenty-four people on the ground were hurt, at least three critically, and one of them died of her injuries on April 27. One of the injured was a diner customer struck in the head by debris that came through a window.
State Representative Jared Solomon, whose district includes the crash site, described a working-class area of dense row homes. “They’re nurses, they’re construction workers, they are first responders,” he told the AP.
The FAA ordered a ground stop at the airport, Philadelphia police began a citywide emergency response, and the Office of Emergency Management closed nearby roads. Governor Josh Shapiro, who was in nearby Elkins Park, went straight to the scene. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum offered condolences and ordered her foreign secretary to help the families.
What investigators found
The National Transportation Safety Board took the lead. On February 2 it recovered the cockpit voice recorder, the enhanced ground proximity warning system and both engines. The March 6 preliminary report said the voice recorder had not recorded the flight and had probably been inoperative for several years.
In August 2026 the NTSB released its public docket as investigators wrapped up fact-finding. It named no probable cause. It did list areas of inquiry. The pitch trim in the wreckage sat at 3.97 degrees, against the 5.5 expected for takeoff, which would have meant more control force. The crew had flown multi-leg trips in the four days before the crash and had never operated into or out of that airport. The recorder, repaired after the crash, held audio only from an earlier flight.
The docket also said Jet Rescue was required to notify the FAA’s Dallas International Field Office before flying in the United States and did not, and that no ramp checks were on record. A final report can take up to six months more.
