Another day, another plane crash, this one a mid-air collision that killed two people in Arizona this morning, according to KGUN.
The two small planes — a Cessna 172S and Lancair 360 MK II — crashed at 8:28 a.m. local time near the Marana Regional Airport, 15 miles northwest of Tucson. Each plane had two people on board.
From CNN:
A Cessna 172S and Lancair 360 MK II collided … near the Marana Regional Airport …
The aircraft "collided while upwind of runway 12," one of two runways at the airport. The Cessna landed "uneventfully" and the Lancair impacted terrain near the other runway and "a post-impact fire ensured," the NTSB said. … The Federal Aviation Administration called the airport an "uncontrolled field," which does not have an operating air traffic control tower.
The incident follows a recent string of aviation incidents beginning with the January 29 midair collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport that killed 67 people when a military helicopter and American Airlines regional jet collided.
Since then, four other aviation incidents have drawn attention to air safety, including the crash of a medevac plane in Philadelphia, a plane that crashed near Nome, Alaska, killing 10 people, a private plane that ran off the runway in Scottsdale, killing the pilot on board, and more recently, a Delta Air Lines regional jet that rolled over on the runway in Toronto.
Meanwhile, in related news, the Associated Press reported today that some of the nearly 400 FAA jobs that the Musk-Trump Administration slashed over the weekend "had direct roles in supporting safety inspectors and airport operations."
But Trump's new FAA Administrator Sean Duffy tried to paint a different picture over the weekend — three days and two plane crashes ago — claiming that the safety assistants and aviation mechanics who were let go were somehow not important. Duffy then tried to blame the slew of recent plane crashes since Donald Trump took office on former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who had zero deadly plane crashes on his watch.
Previously: Trump fires "hundreds" of FAA workers — hours before yet another deadly plane crash
