Federal investigators work to determine cause of deadly San Diego plane crash

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: PBS News/AP

May 23, 2025 6:48 PM EDT


SAN DIEGO (AP) — The weather alert system and runway lights weren’t working at a foggy San Diego airport where a private jet was planning to land before it crashed into a neighborhood, but the cause of the crash remains unclear, officials said Friday.

Dan Baker of the National Transportation Safety Board also said investigators haven’t determined a cause of Thursday’s crash that likely killed all six people aboard.

Baker said the weather alert system at Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport was down at the time of the crash due to an unrelated power surge. He said the pilot instead got weather information from Marine Corps Air Station Miramar about 4 miles (6.44 kilometers) north, but he was aware of the fog. The runway lights were also down. The plane crashed about 2 miles (3.22 kilometers) from the airport.

Music talent agent Dave Shapiro, and two unnamed employees of the music agency he co-founded, Sound Talent Group, were among the dead along with the former drummer for metal band The Devil Wears Prada. Shapiro, 42, had a pilot’s license and was listed as the owner of the 1985 Cessna 550 Citation that plowed into the neighborhood of U.S. Navy housing shortly before 4 a.m. Thursday.

Read more: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/federal-investigators-work-to-determine-cause-of-deadly-san-diego-plane-crash

[BoRaGard]

1. America's skies are a dangerous mess since the G.O.P. trashed the FAA

Freaking republicons are dangerously incompetent. They only things they are good at is lying and grifting,

[2naSalit]

2. I'm wondering when...

The airline pilots will strike until things improve.

[bucolic_frolic]

3. Wow everything went wrong there.

"likely"? They don't know?

[Ponietz]

4. Are the mysterious power failures on ships and at airports caused by nefarious foreign actors?

Chinese or Russian?

[BoRaGard]

6. Or by G.O.P. malfeasance or incompetence?

[Ponietz]

7. Can an argument be made that power failures on the ships in Baltimore and New York were due to GOP incompetence?

Doesn’t seem so. To recap:

—The Cuathemoc lost power and hit the Brooklyn bridge
—The Dali lost power when it slammed into the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore
—Communication outages at the FAA
—Rogue communication devices in Chinese solar panels
—Chinese military hackers behind the 2017 Equifax breach
—Massive racketeering case against Huawei pending

[mdbl]

5. Didn't know we had any federal investigators left.

[usonian]

8. Countdown to DEI. 5,4,3,2,1

[mn9driver]

9. Miramar tower reported their ceiling and visibility was 200 and 1/2

It was 4 in the morning. The runway lights at Gibbs were out of service. They didn’t have the ground based lighting that was legally required to shoot the approach.

They impacted some wires about two miles from the runway, when they should have still been around 600 feet above ground—and obviously unable to see the ground or the airport due to the ceiling and visibility and lack of lighting.

From the reports of the post crash fire, it appears that they had plenty of fuel on board and likely could have diverted to a field with operational lighting and/or better weather.

Based on the limited information in the news, this approach should not have been flown. Very sad. RIP

[GaryDLap]

10. Retired FAA Inspector here

It appears that it was a single pilot operation and his decision to attempt the approach was foolish in light of his probability of being fatigued, the weather conditions and the unavailability of airport runway lighting. All he had to do was divert to Palm Springs or Ontario and wait for the marine layer to burn off.
It used to drive me nuts to arrive at the scene of a weather related aircraft crash to a clear blue sky and calm conditions.

[ananda]

11. The answer is already clear: Musk/Trump

The FAA is fucked now.