Witnesses describe ‘unreal' fiery scene after jet crashes along Florida highway

Witnesses described the surreal moments a jet crashed along a southwest Florida highway on Friday, colliding into a car and sending flames and black smoke into the air

After losing both engines, the pilot of a Bombardier Challenger 604 jet attempted to make an emergency landing but instead crashed near the Pine Ridge Road exit near Naples.

Brianna Walker told the Associated Press she saw the wing of the jet drag the car in front of hers and slam into the wall.

“It’s seconds that separated us from the car in front of us,” she said. “The wing pulverized this one car.”

Walker and her friend spotted the jet moments before it hit the highway, allowing her friend to pull over before the crash.

“The plane was over our heads by inches,” she said. “It took a hard right and skid across the highway.”

Walker said an explosion of flames then burst from the plane with a loud boom. Pieces of the plane littered the highway.

“It feels unreal, like a movie,” she said. “It was seconds between us dying.”

Broward County resident Garrett Elsinger told NBC6 he was driving with his son to Tampa when they heard an explosion and saw orange flames and what they thought was a car accident.

"Within a few seconds, we were getting closer, and we're like, wait a minute — that's not a car, that's a plane," Elsinger said. "Thick, black smoke is billowing up and as we're getting closer, I'm like, that's not a small Cessna plane that you read about that came and landed on the highway, that's a jet — that's a big passenger plane."

Joe Robinson was driving along the highway when he saw the jet "completely engulfed in flames."

"As I got up to the accident, you could see the retained wall on the outside of the highway had a hole on it, had a char and burn marks where the plane, I'm presuming, made contact with the wall before ending up on the actual highway itself," he said.

Robinson witnessed the immediate aftermath, saying he saw people running away from the wreckage and that traffic on the highway went into a complete halt.

"It was awful, just driving by with my windows up, with my A/C on, I could feel the heat very, very easily from the plane," he said. "It was incredibly hot. I couldn't even imagine being outside of my vehicle. It's a terrible thing to see, especially on a Friday afternoon when the weather is perfect and something like that happens."

The jet, which had five people on board, had taken off from Ohio and was scheduled to land in Naples before flying back to Fort Lauderdale.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate the crash.