Plane stopped in Wichita before fatal, devastating crash in San Diego neighborhood
A private plane that crashed into a San Diego military housing neighborhood early Thursday — killing those on board and setting multiple houses on fire — stopped briefly in Wichita hours before the crash.
Officials said at least two people on the plane died and eight people on the ground were injured, according to the San Diego Tribune. The plane had the capacity to carry eight to 10 people.
The flight tracking website FlightAware shows a Cessna Citation II twin-jet plane departed from Teterboro, New Jersey, at 11:15 p.m. ET on Wednesday night. It landed at Colonel James Jabara Airport in northeast Wichita at 1:49 a.m. CT and departed 47 minutes later. It was scheduled to land at Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport in San Diego at 3:37 a.m. PT.
Valerie Wise, a spokesperson for the Wichita Airport Authority, told The Eagle that the plane — which is registered in Alaska — made a fueling stop in Wichita. Neither the owner nor the crew of the jet is from Wichita, she said.
Jabara Airport is the smaller of two airports owned by the Wichita Airport Authority. It has a single-runway public airport at 37th and Webb that provides full-service, fixed-base operator services and is a general aviation reliever airport.
The San Diego crash marks the second tragic crash of a plane that departed from Wichita this year. In January, American Airlines Flight 5342 collided midair with a U.S. Army helicopter as it approached the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia. Both aircraft — carrying 67 people — crashed into the Potomac River in Washington, D.C. No one aboard survived.
Assistant San Diego Fire Chief Dan Eddy said at a news conference Thursday morning that authorities will be investigating whether the Cessna jet hit a power line, causing the crash. Damage included several vehicles and homes in what the AP reported is the U.S. military’s largest housing neighborhood.
This story was originally published May 22, 2025 at 11:38 AM.