2 dead after midair collision between 2 planes near Marana

A midair collision involving two small planes in southern Arizona killed two people Wednesday morning, authorities said.

Officials with the Marana Police Department say they responded to a call about the crash at the local airport — just outside Tucson.

Both planes were smaller, fixed-wing single engine planes carrying two people each, according to the Federal Aviation Administration, and they collided midair near the airport. No information has been released yet about the other two passengers.

Marana’s airport is what’s called an “uncontrolled field,” meaning it does not have a manned traffic control tower. Instead, pilots announce their positions regularly through a common radio channel.

The National Transportation Safety Board is conducting an investigation into the crash.

One plane landed uneventfully and the other hit the ground near a runway and caught fire, the National Transportation Safety Board said, citing preliminary information before its investigators had arrived.

The Marana Police Department confirmed that the two people killed were aboard one aircraft and said responders did not have a chance to provide medical treatment. Sgt. Vincent Rizzi said the two people on the other plane were uninjured.

The municipal fire department helped extinguish flames, Rizzi said.

The collision came more than a week after a plane crash in Scottsdale killed one of two pilots of a private jet owned by Mötley Crüe singer Vince Neil. That aircraft veered off a runway and hit a business jet.

It also followed four major aviation disasters that have occurred in North America in the last month. The most recent involved a Delta jet that flipped on its roof while landing in Toronto and the deadly crash of a commuter plane in Alaska.

In late January, 67 people were killed in a midair collision in Washington, D.C., involving an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army helicopter, marking the United States' deadliest aviation disaster since 2001. Just a day later, a medical transport jet with a child patient, her mother and four others aboard crashed into a Philadelphia neighborhood on Jan. 31, exploding in a fireball that engulfed several homes. That crash killed seven people, including all those aboard, and injured 19 others.

The airport in Marana has two intersecting runways and operates without an air traffic control tower.

A multimillion-dollar project was underway to build a tower but delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic pushed back construction. Tens of thousands of flights arrive and depart from the airport annually.

Most airports in the U.S. do not have air traffic control towers, only those with commercial traffic coming in.

At those airspaces, pilots use a designated radio channel to announce intentions for landing and taking off, said Jeff Guzzetti, an airline safety consultant and a former Federal Aviation Administration and NTSB investigator.

Just because an airport doesn’t have a control tower doesn’t mean it’s unsafe, he said.

“All the pilots should be broadcasting on this common traffic advisory frequency. And there’s also a responsibility to see and avoid. Each pilot is responsible to see and avoid so they don’t collide with each other,” Guzzetti said.