On the afternoon of February 9, 2024, Hop-A-Jet Flight 823 was on final approach into Naples Municipal Airport in Florida.
The Bombardier Challenger 604 had flown uneventfully from Columbus, Ohio, and been cleared to land on Runway 23. Five people were on board. Captain Edward Murphy, 50, was flying. Second-in-command Ian Hofmann, 65, sat beside him. Flight attendant Sydney Bosmans and two passengers were in the cabin.
At 3:07 p.m., about two miles from the runway, both engines failed.
Murphy radioed the tower. He told them he had lost both engines and was not going to make it in.
His co-pilot suggested putting the aircraft down in the water nearby. Murphy decided otherwise.
He picked Interstate 75 instead, a stretch of highway carrying afternoon traffic 2.75 nautical miles short of the runway.
He told Bosmans to prepare the cabin. She moved from her jump seat, briefed the two passengers on the brace position, and called out the command three times as the aircraft came down.
The jet struck two vehicles on the highway before coming to rest near mile marker 106. It caught fire on impact.
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Murphy and Hofmann did not survive. Bosmans and both passengers did.
A motorist who happened to be a former paramedic ran toward the wreckage and moved the three survivors away from the plane before it was consumed by flames.
One person in a vehicle the jet struck was seriously injured. Everyone else on the ground walked away.
There was no runway available to Murphy in the time he had. There was a stretch of water, and there was a highway full of moving cars, and he had seconds to choose between them with two engines dead and a plane that was coming down no matter what he decided.
He chose the highway.
What that choice meant is not abstract. The flight attendant behind him ran her training exactly as it was written, brace command and all, in the seconds before impact, because the man flying the aircraft had already made the harder call that gave her something to prepare for.
Three people who boarded that jet in Columbus went home. The man who put it down did not.
Most of the planning men do for their families happens on calm days, with time to think it through. Murphy's decision was made with no time at all, on behalf of four people who were trusting him with something he never had to explain to them.
He did not get to see whether it worked.
If two engines failed under you tomorrow and you had seconds to choose the ground you would hit, would you trust yourself to choose it for the people behind you instead of for yourself?