Learjet Crashes Into Parked Gulfstream at Scottsdale; One Fatality

The Askew Gear

Cellphone and surveillance video from Scottsdale Airport on 10 February 2025 shows something wrong before the Learjet 35A even touches down: the rear left landing gear, visible on approach, sitting in an "askew" position — not properly extended and locked the way it should be. The aircraft came in on final for Runway 21 anyway, arriving from a fuel stop in Austin, Texas, on a flight that had started that morning in Florida.

It touched down at 2:38 p.m. and immediately began veering left.

Fifty Knots, No Way to Stop

The Learjet wasn't equipped with thrust reversers, and the drag chute — the parachute-braking device some Learjets carry specifically to help shed speed quickly on the ground — was never deployed. Without either of those tools working for it, and with the left gear already compromised, the aircraft kept sliding left as it exited the runway surface. It crossed the airport's safety-area islands, continued over a taxiway, and struck a windsock on the way through. Still moving at around 50 knots — close to 57 miles per hour — it entered a ramp area and struck the right side of a parked Gulfstream G200 business jet.

Joie Vitosky

The Learjet carried four people: two pilots and two passengers. One of the pilots, 78-year-old Joie Vitosky of the Dallas area, was killed in the collision. He was the aircraft's regular captain, someone who had flown with his co-pilot regularly since earlier that year. His daughter, speaking afterward, said she believed her father's actions in those final seconds likely saved the lives of everyone else aboard — a belief rooted in a lifetime of knowing how he flew, even if the specifics of what he did in the cockpit that afternoon may never be fully reconstructed.

The co-pilot and both passengers were seriously injured. On the ground, a crew member aboard the parked Gulfstream — present when the Learjet struck it — was also hurt, later treated and released. The Scottsdale Fire Department worked to extricate a trapped occupant from the wreckage; there was no post-crash fire, though hazmat teams were called in as a precaution to inspect nearby buildings, which were subsequently cleared.

An Owner Who Wasn't Aboard

The Learjet was registered to a company owned by Mötley Crüe frontman Vince Neil, and his connection to the aircraft drew immediate national attention to what would otherwise have been reported as a serious but comparatively obscure general-aviation accident. Neil himself was not on the flight. His representative confirmed this within hours of the crash and issued condolences on his behalf; the two passengers who were aboard and injured were reported to be people close to him. None of that changes what actually happened at the runway threshold that afternoon — the story belongs to the flight crew and the mechanical failure that put them there, not to who owned the airplane.

What the NTSB Traced

Investigators reconstructed the landing in detail: the compromised gear visible on approach, the touchdown, the left drift, the crossing of the safety islands and taxiway, the strike on the windsock, and the final impact with the parked Gulfstream — a sequence that unfolded over a relatively short distance and a matter of seconds once the aircraft was on the ground. The preliminary findings point toward landing-gear failure as the initiating problem, though a final probable-cause determination requires the fuller investigation the NTSB continues to conduct.

What a Drag Chute and Reversers Are For

Many Learjet 35A models were built without thrust reversers, relying instead on wheel brakes and, on models so equipped, a drag chute deployed immediately after touchdown to help shed speed quickly on the ground.

An Accident That Became a Story About Someone Else

Because the aircraft was registered to a company owned by a recognizable public figure, the crash generated far more national attention within hours than a comparable general-aviation accident involving an unremarkable owner typically would — coverage that, in the earliest hours, sometimes focused more on Neil's connection to the flight than on the fact that a 78-year-old career pilot had just died doing his job.

Joie Vitosky didn't survive it. Everyone else on both aircraft did.