2015 Blackbushe Phenom 300 crash

On 31 July 2015, an Embraer Phenom 300 business jet crashed into a car park next to Blackbushe Airport in Hampshire, United Kingdom, while attempting to land. The sole pilot and all three passengers on board were killed. The three passengers were members of the bin Laden family.

The subsequent inquiry found no evidence of any pre‑existing technical defect in the aircraft and concluded that "several factors combined to create a very high workload for the pilot [...] leading him to become fixated on continuing the approach."

Flight

At the time of the crash, the aircraft was on a flight from Milan Malpensa Airport, Italy, to Blackbushe Airport with three passengers, all Saudi nationals, and one crew member, a Jordanian pilot, on board. The passengers were 75-year-old Raja Bashir Hashim, one of the wives of Osama bin Laden's father Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (who had died in an aircraft crash in 1967), as well as her 53-year-old daughter Sana Mohammed Bin Laden and Sana's husband 56-year-old Zuhair Anuar Hashim. The pilot was 57-year-old Mazen al-Dajah, who had 11,000 flight hours, including 1,181 hours on the Embraer Phenom 300. He had previously served as an Airbus A320 pilot. The aircraft involved had no prior incidents; weather conditions for the approach into Blackbushe Airport were warm and sunny, with very good visibility and winds from the south.

Crash

The crash occurred at 15:00 BST. Shortly before landing and while flying along the landing circuit, the pilot received a traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS) advisory message warning him of the presence of a microlight aircraft also in the circuit. Six times during the Phenom's final approach, the terrain awareness and warning system issued "pull up" warnings. As it reached the runway threshold, the jet was travelling at 151 kn, 43 kn faster than its final approach target speed of 108 kn.

Based on tyre marks left on the runway, the aircraft touched down two-thirds of the way along the runway, leaving only about 440 m of runway in which to stop. The aircraft landed at a speed of 134 kn (compared to the 108 kn recommended by the manufacturer); the required stopping distance at this speed would have been more than 600 m. It struck an earthen bank and became briefly airborne again before coming to a rest in the car park of a British Car Auctions facility, directly adjacent to Blackbushe Airport. The wreckage caught fire within one second of coming to rest. Several fire engines attended the scene to extinguish the fire, which was complicated by the burning wreckage setting alight several cars around the wreckage in the car park.

All four people on board the aircraft survived the landing, but were killed by the post-crash fire. No-one on the ground was injured.