A midair collision between two small planes at Marana Regional Airport in southern Arizona killed two people Wednesday morning, authorities said.
Federal aviation officials reported that each plane carried two occupants when they collided over the airport, located on the outskirts of Tucson. One aircraft landed safely, while the other crashed near a runway and caught fire, according to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which is leading the investigation.
Marana Police Department officials confirmed that the two people who died were aboard the aircraft that crashed. Emergency responders did not have the opportunity to provide medical treatment. Sgt. Vincent Rizzi stated that the two occupants of the other plane were unharmed.
The Marana Fire Department assisted in extinguishing the flames, authorities said.
Neither of the planes involved—the Lancair and Cessna 172—were based at the airport, according to a statement from the town of Marana.
The collision comes just over a week after a fatal plane crash in Scottsdale, Arizona, killed one of two pilots aboard a private jet owned by Mötley Crüe singer Vince Neil. That aircraft veered off a runway and struck a business jet.
The accident also follows multiple recent aviation disasters across North America. Among them, a Delta Air Lines jet flipped onto its roof while landing in Toronto, and a commuter plane crashed in Alaska, resulting in fatalities.
In late January, a midair collision over Washington, D.C., between an American Airlines passenger jet and a U.S. Army helicopter killed 67 people, marking the deadliest aviation disaster in the United States since 2001. The following day, a medical transport jet carrying a child patient, her mother, and four others crashed into a Philadelphia neighborhood, igniting a fire that engulfed multiple homes. Seven people were killed, and 19 others were injured.
Marana Regional Airport has two intersecting runways but operates without an air traffic control tower. A multimillion-dollar project to construct a control tower has been delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, officials said.
The airport handles tens of thousands of flights annually. Most general aviation airports in the U.S. do not have control towers, relying instead on pilots to communicate using a common traffic advisory frequency.
“Pilots are responsible for broadcasting their positions and intentions over the radio and visually avoiding collisions,” said Jeff Guzzetti, a former Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and NTSB investigator. “The absence of a control tower does not inherently make an airport unsafe.”
