Black box of ambulance jet that crashed in Philly wasn’t recording audio, likely hadn’t worked for years: NTSB

The cockpit voice recorder, known as the “black box,” from a plane that crashed and left seven people dead soon after takeoff from a Philadelphia airport didn’t record the aircraft’s final moments, investigators said in a preliminary report released Thursday. 

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released its preliminary report into the Jan. 31 crash of a medical Learjet 55 bound for Missouri that crashed in Philadelphia, killing two pilots, two crew members, 11-year-old pediatric patient Valentina Guzman Murillo and her mother and a pedestrian on the ground. 

More than a dozen others were injured. 

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The crash created a fireball and sent shrapnel flying through a residential neighborhood where the plane crashed.

The NTSB said the plane was in the air less than a minute before it went down. During an investigation, officials found the voice recorder below eight feet of dirt and debris. 

“After extensive repair and cleaning, the 30-minute-long tape-based recording medium was auditioned to determine its contents,” the report states. “The CVR did not record the accident flight and during the audition it was determined that the CVR had likely not been recording audio for several years.”

Murillo was in Philadelphia to receive life-saving treatment for spina bifida, Fox Philadelphia reported. 

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The cockpit voice recorder of the plane that crashed in Philadelphia was found under dirt and debris after the aircraft crashed in a residential neighborhood.  (NTSB)

“The plan was to bring them home to live out the rest of her life surrounded with love and with her adoring family,” said Susan Marie Fasino of His Wings Ranch, the organization that had been assisting the family the past five years.

Investigators determined the Learjet 55 took off at 6:06 p.m. and was headed to Springfield-Branson National Airport in Missouri. The flight traveled southwest and made a slight right before turning left at a peak altitude of 1,650 feet, the report states. 

The flight was in communication with air traffic control, and no distress call was received, investigators said. It’s believed the plane struck a commercial sign during its descent and left behind a 1,400-foot debris field.

Investigators work after a small plane crashed in Philadelphia  Feb. 1, 2025.  (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

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The plane’s enhanced ground proximity warning system, which investigators believe “may contain flight data in its nonvolatile memory,” was shipped to the manufacturer to see if data can be recovered.