We're clear to land but we're not going to make the runway.

We've lost both engines.

Collier County, 911.

What is the address of your emergency?

A plane crashed a jet.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

This was an extremely difficult situation.

For an aircraft emergency, every second counts.

Literally every second counts.

The job in and of itself that we do as emergency responders is dangerous.

We all come together and do what, what we're trained to do.

And we did that that day.

She literally saved their lives.

Theres an alert three in progress.

We're on scene of the crash.

Is there anybody else in there?!

Yes!

They're heroes.

Every single one of them.

Hop-A-Jet 823s with you on the right down wind for a five mile final runway, two three.

A routine charter flight from Columbus, Ohio to Southwest Florida on a beautiful sunny day.

Runway 23 clear to land Runway 122012 bus one six.

On board the jet, two passengers and three crew members the pilot, Edward Murphy, the copilot Ian Hoffman, and the flight attendant, Sydney Bosmans.

Passengers Aaron Baker and Audra Green are flying from Ohio State's Don Scott Airport at 1 p.m.

Friday, February 9th, 2024.

Their flight is scheduled to land in Naples just after 3 p.m., a straight shot south through the US, with the last leg flying along the picturesque Florida coastline.

The Bombardier Challenger 604 jet, operated by Hop-A-Jet Worldwide charter, is just a few minutes away from making its final approach.

The plane is about six and a half miles north of the Naples Municipal Airport, flying at about 2000ft altitude and 190mph.

When it's cleared to land, everything seems routine until warning lights indicate engine trouble.

The crew instantly communicates with the control tower.

Okay.

Challenger.

Hop-A-Jet 823 lost both engines.

Emergency!

I'm making an emergency landing.

The control tower triggers an alert three, a tone that warns the Naples fire rescue crew stationed on the Naples Municipal Airport property, that the pilots have declared an emergency.

Everybody standby.

There's an alert three in progress.

Everybody stand by.

The way the alert tone came out and what she said from the control tower.

We all knew that this was going to be bad.

Something was going to happen.

Either they were going to go down major in flight emergency.

Just, we knew by her tone that this was not going to turn out well.

Emergency responders at the airport prepare for a possible crash landing seven seconds after their initial communication of engine failure with air traffic control.

The plane has descended, flying at 140mph.

The pilot maintains composure about the dire situation.

We're clear to land, but we're not going to make the runway.

We've lost both engines.

This was an extremely difficult situation.

This emergency did not occur at 25,000ft, where they had a lot of time to take care of the situation.

This occurred somewhere between 2000 and 1000ft, very close to the ground.

Willard Shepard, a retired Air Force fighter pilot and aviation attorney, says pilots Murphy and Hoffman have just seconds to make life and death decisions.

They are still miles from the airport, too far to glide in on the plane's momentum.

They would have been able to go.

It would have been short of two miles.

They instantaneously determined there's no way we can get to the airport.

All emergency responders across Collier County knew that an emergency landing was imminent.

So we were listening to the dispatch.

We were prepared to respond.

It was just a matter of where where is this going to happen?

In an extraordinary alignment of timing and circumstance, the North Collier Air Rescue Team and the Collier County Sheriff's Office Aviation Unit are at a nearby hangar preparing to showcase their equipment for a community presentation.

Quicker than they ever could have planned.

They are suited up to help.

We were getting ready for a demonstration and we were all hooked into the microphones with their helmets on.

We were sitting on the dolly, spooled up, ready to launch, when we heard the pilot make his announcement that he had an engine failure and he wasn't going to make the runway.

And that's at this point.

We determine that we have the equipment and the ability to respond immediately.

So we took off and headed that direction.

With only moments, the pilots have to find a safe landing area.

The challenge is rush hour.

On a Friday afternoon during the height of season when retired snowbirds and vacationers visit popular Collier County.

The timing and location of this landing adds another level of stress for the pilots, according to Heather Mazurkiewicz, a public information officer for the North Collier Fire Department.

If I'm going to look at it from an emergency responder standpoint, I'm going to think that highway versus residential area where I have a plane that has flammable fuel on it, where if I did crash there, I would have debris that might spread through other areas.

As an aviator, you want to make sure you can get on the ground safely, but you never want to endanger anyone else on the ground.

The issue with residential streets and many times is you've got power lines.

A lot of times, you've got light poles, parked cars.

You could have kids playing in the street.

You can have all kinds of things in a residential neighborhood.

They had bad choices in front of them because they couldn't make it to the airport, but they had a great runway in front of them with almost unlimited distance to land.

And that was I-75.

Sheri Rapisarda, a retired paramedic, is on her way to a job at Costco when she sees the plane overhead.

And I had seen a very low flying aircraft, but considering that there's an airport in the dead of our city, that's not necessarily uncommon.

The crash was going to happen at the airport.

By the time we got to our vehicles, the, air traffic controller on the overhead advised us it was no longer going to be at the airport.

Now we're going to be on I-75.

With just seconds to prepare for the emergency, the flight attendant tells the two passengers to brace for impact.

Hop-A-Jet 823 will try to land on Interstate 75, flying in the same direction as southbound traffic.

Aviation experts say landing on the highway compared to other roads seemed to be the best option.

Cars are traveling at a speed closer to the airplane's velocity, making it easier for the pilots to avoid a collision.

But the large volume of traffic on I-75 is also a risk.

The area can see 9000 cars in an hour on the bad side.

They lost both their engines and they were close to the ground.

That's never good.

The positive things were they had the landing gear down.

They had the flaps down.

Everything they did in a very short period of time, I mean, extremely compressed period of time, was fantastic for them to even be able to have the opportunity to land and land safely.

According to the NTSB report, tracking data for the jet ends at 3:10 p.m.

directly over Interstate 75 in Naples.

Collier County 911.

What is the address of your emergency?

A plane crashed a jet southbound on I-75 south of Pine Ridge Road.

Collier County 911.

What is the address of your emergency?

I'm on the 75 going north.

Just witnessed a plane crash right on the freeway, and it's engulfed in flames right now.

We had multiple people up to about, I think 39 people calling in about that plane crash to Let us know what was going on.

But as soon as we got that first indication that there was a plane crash, we went ahead and sent the call out to fire, EMS and the sheriff's office for an aircraft emergency.

Every second counts.

Literally every second counts depending on how they land, how they hit.

If the fuel tank ruptures, if there is an auto ignition.

When I came around the corner, I saw a massive, massive of the darkest black smoke I had ever seen, a fireball.

And then I very quickly realized that it wasn't that it was the jet that I had seen rapidly falling out of the sky just mere seconds before, not knowing what we were going to.

It was pretty, you know, kind of an uneasiness as we approach it, knowing that we're all pilots and knowing what they were, going through at the last few moments.

They're trying to save the aircraft and the people on board.

We saw all the smoke fire, and it was tragic.

It was definitely a critical incident.

And a career moment.

There's also a vehicle accident from the airplane.

We need the medic units to come south on I-75.

It looked like a movie.

But it wasn't.

Oh my God.

Oh my God, oh my God.

Rapisarda captures video of the plane right after the crash.

Oh my God.

She pulls over to help.

She puts her phone in her pocket, which is still recording.

She is among the first to try to provide aid.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

Emergency Fire crews raced to try to reach the crash site, knowing time is running out for potential survivors.

It's not like a house where you have rooms.

You going to shut the door to keep the fire from coming.

A plane cause of the fuel on it.

And how the fuel burns and the heat of which it burns.

The fire was coming down the fuselage, so your normal modes of exit or egress were blocked by fire.

I would say this is probably one of the most chaotic situations a human being could find themselves in.

There's smoke, flames that are all rising up around you.

Your instinct for survival just just kicks in.

The two passengers and flight attendant can't get the main door open, despite tearing at the wall paneling surrounding it.

They had to find another way to escape.

Inspired thinking leads Aaron Baker and the flight attendant to the crowded luggage compartment in the belly of the plane.

They get the door open and jump out as flames engulf the aircraft.

Within a matter of seconds.

I had a lot of thoughts that kind of went through my mind.

And at the same time, I had seen very quickly people coming from what was now the inner side of the crash, and I realized that they were the survivors.

So I jumped out of my car.

Excuse me.

Sorry.

I jumped out of my car and started to run towards them.

So I was heading north.

So I started to run across the interstate towards the jet and started to yell to them.

First responder EMT, paramedic I have the knowledge to help.

I can help you right now.

The crash is on the southbound lane just before the 105.

90 seconds after receiving the emergency alert, the Air rescue team reaches the crash site.

We made our loop around and we decided that the best place was to put it on I-75 to sit down and, let the rescue specialists get out of the helicopter.

So we quickly made a decision to land the aircraft and let the fire department personnel out of the helicopter.

Just left.

Just left.

Just left.

We█re clear down.

We decided that we're going to put down on the north side, the northbound lanes of traffic, set down let the two firefighter medics out so they can start their triage.

Then they took off.

They they went back up in the air.

They circled around the scene, and they were radioing back to dispatch to be able to say that we have debris in both ways, upwards of 400 yards.

We have traffic.

There's oncoming traffic.

There's cars that are continuing to go through the scene.

We need to make sure that we shut down both of the exits, both southbound and northbound lanes.

When we talk about that scene size up in almost every single emergency situation, the ability for the incident commander, somebody that's in charge of that emergency to give a clear picture to all of the units that are responding in, is it's paramount.

I had never, Felt heat like that before.

Rapisarda█s training kicks in.

I was trying to keep other bystanders away from the plane.

People's vehicles that were trying to get in and like, they're getting in and out of their vehicles, trying to tell them, please get back in your car because the plane was exploding.

That communication is captured because Rapisarda█s phone is still recording.

Sound of the passengers and flight attendant from her pocket.

An immense amount of traffic that people were still trying to drive by.

Because I really think people were shocked at what they were witnessing and maybe just couldn't quite process what was going on upon arrival.

It was honestly just overwhelming a little bit.

I have never seen anything so catastrophic essentially.

Two pilots are still on the plane, three others are out of the plane.

Two minutes after impact North Collier's fire truck is the first ground unit to reach the site.

As we were pulling up, there was a secondary explosion, and when something explodes, something goes flying.

So not only are you worried about the fire, but now you're worried about projectiles going through the air, maybe hitting someone.

So now you have additional injuries, possibly deaths, just because people want to get closer or they don't want to listen.

With no nearby water source on the interstate, getting the fire under control is critical.

Emergency crews have no way to know how much of the hundreds of gallons of fuel that had been picked up in Ohio was still on board.

There could be numerous challenges with the jet fuel fire one the heat, two the amount, and three is it moving?

So you got to remember it's fuel.

It's liquid.

What if it starts flowing somewhere and if the fuel is on fire, then you have a running fuel fire.

So that becomes a challenge.

The fire department works quickly to stifle the flames with foam.

So the foam is going to smother the fire.

That foam comes in and it almost like a blanket, and it blankets where that fire is happening.

So it does two things.

It removes the oxygen, and fire needs oxygen to survive.

And it also begins to cool during a storm.

I very quickly learned that the last two that were on the plane were the pilots.

And I knew there was no chance of survival for the pilots.

Edward Murphy was 50 years old.

Ian Hoffman, 65.

Flight attendant Sydney Bosmans and passengers Aaron Baker and Andra Green are all okay with no serious injuries.

The next step is to prepare the plane for examination by the National Transportation Safety Board.

The team uses their specialized equipment to take the plane apart to reduce the risk of a fire reigniting.

Law enforcement says this incident, like others, always provides lessons, an opportunity to improve, but they celebrate the success where they can.

We run thousands of calls over the course of a year as an emergency response agency.

Plane crashes are not a typical thing.

The event in and of itself was extraordinary.

We may never, hopefully we'll never have, another call like that.

And I'm just glad that our, our training with, came into play with vehicle fires and other types of fires that day.

It really is amazing to see the different agencies come together and do the job that they're trained to do.

We are capable of something that catastrophic, to be able to put our training to the test.

And, you know, we signed up to be public servants and help the community.

And that's I feel, exactly what we did.

I really need to recognize all the first responders that responded to this incident, and the great job that they did in maintaining, calm and safety.

The job in and of itself that we do as emergency responders is dangerous.

We get together on a regular basis, and we train together so that if we are ever faced with emergencies like this, we have the outcome that we had in this particular situation, the depth of of pride that, I feel as a member of that team is it's indescribable.

You want to hope that when you do all of these trainings that a you're never faced with a situation where you have to have to do this, you want to be able to reflect that when you are faced with that, those decisions, the emergency responder to your left or to your right, whether it's a sheriff's office patch or an M, an EMS patch or a fire patch that we all come together and do what what we're trained to do.

And we did that that day.

Rapisarda, the retired EMT, is still processing what happened that day.

I'm not used to being one of the first people there.

I was always used to arriving on an ambulance.

So it's it's different to see it from the beginning.

I will admit, I, I don't know what I was supposed to be taught or what life lesson that was, but I guess I'm capable of handling a lot more than I ever thought.

Still, she is not comfortable with being called a hero.

It's a title that she says best describes the flight crew.

I think about them.

I pray about them and their families every day.

Because.

Those two men saved countless lives that day.

Because just over that wall, there's an entire neighborhood of families.

It really could have been catastrophic, but it wasn't.

And that's the most important message that day.

They█re heroes, every single one of them.

This flight attendant was faced with, an environment that none of us could possibly understand.

It was the passengers and the flight attendant that were the first responders that day.

And in amongst chaos, they stayed calm and they communicated with each other.

And that is why they are still alive today.

The two aviators, in my view, certainly were heroic because at the end result, their passengers and the flight attendant were able to exit the aircraft and they were able to do so safely.

And no one on the ground lost their life.

And while it's so tragic that the two of them are not physically here with us, and obviously their spirits live on with us, is that they did a fantastic job to make sure that this situation did not turn into more of a tragedy than it already is.

Those pilots that were on those planes, they were fathers, sons, brothers, uncles.

We felt that loss for that family.

There is a part of us that I'm sure would wish that we could have gotten there even sooner, to try to stop even that from happening.

I hope that the family of those pilots understands the deep gratitude and appreciation that this community has for the sacrifice that those pilots made that day.

It has not gone unnoticed, and nor will it ever go unrecognized or unnoticed.

More than two years after the 2024 crash, Mazurkiewicz says the actions of the crew and passengers continue to impact lives today, and how the North Collier Fire Department trains the public to survive an emergency and how to help others.

When I go and I teach classes at homeowners associations at schools, I use that flight attendant and her decision making capabilities.

The flight attendants to the passengers being able to communicate with each other and working together.

That definitely saved their lives.

It's an amazing example of what civilians can do, of what human beings are capable of in extreme situations.

As emergency responders, we save people, but civilians have the most amount of saves and rescues by far.

Then emergency responders.

If you feel you can and you safely can act, act because it it could potentially save lives and there's nothing greater than that.

Civilians can be the ones that can react in these situations to maybe help themselves or help their neighbors get out of a get out of a out of a situation.

I believe that is how, as an educator, as an emergency response agency, that we don't let a situation like this plane crash die there, that we carried on, and we use this scenario or the scene that happened there.

We use it for good to be able to share with the community the work that we did as emergency responders on scene that day.

Everything that came together so well and we saved all of those lives is amazing.

But the work that the pilots and the flight attendants did that day is going to save an exponential amount of people in the future, as we carry on and we we, we talk about who they are and what they did.

That's I think that's that's what we need to remember from from all of this.

♪♪