The doomed private plane carrying music executive Dave Shapiro and former Devil Wears Prada drummer Daniel Williams was attempting to land at an airport with no working runway lights and an inoperable weather alert system, according to authorities.
San Diego’s Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport experienced a power surge on Thursday that knocked out the weather alert system and the tarmac’s runway lights before the Cessna 550 Citation’s failed landing killed six on Thursday, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
Air traffic control records showed that the pilot considered diverting to another airport just before the 3:45 a.m. crash due to dense fog, but it was unclear if he was aware of the runway light issue, the NTSB said.
The Federal Aviation Administration had posted a notice that the runway lights were inoperable, but the pilot, who took off from Teterboro in New Jersey late Wednesday, made no mention of the issue during his conversation with ATC on the West Coast, the NTSB found.
“Doesn’t sound great but we’ll give it a go,” the pilot told the air traffic controller regarding the weather conditions, according to the NTSB.
Minutes later, the plane would hit a powerline and crash two miles away from the airport into a US Navy housing unit, killing all six aboard, including Williams, 39, and Sound Talent Group co-founder Dave Shapiro, 42.
“This accident has all the earmarks of a classic attempt to approach an airport in really bad weather and poor visibility,” former NTSB and FAA crash investigator Jeff Guzzetti told the Associated Press.
Guzzetti further speculated that exhaustion from the cross-country red-eye flight could have played a role in the accident, according to the AP.
At least two other unnamed Sound Talent Group employees also died in the wreck, Billboard reported.
Miraculously, no one in the residential neighborhood where the plane crashed was killed or seriously injured, though photos show the charred plane crashed on a sidewalk just feet from a suburban home.
“All I could see was fire. The roof of the house was still on fire. You could see the night sky from our living room,” Ben McCarty, whose home was struck by debris, told local KGTV.
He recalled the plane rolling down the block, igniting everything in its path, including garbage cans, cars and trees.
As many as 15 homes were damaged by the flaming wreckage, and eight people were treated for smoke inhalation.
Williams posted several photos from the plane on Instagram hours before the crash, including two from the cockpit in which he joked about being the co-pilot.
The rocker survived a 2019 mass shooting at a Dayton, Ohio, bar that killed nine people.
Shapiro was an avid pilot and certified flying instructor with 14 years experience, according to Velocity Aviation.
The NTSB stated its investigation into the crash is ongoing.
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