Amy Jo Johnson was on the private jet with Donnie Wahlberg when it aborted takeoff at Harry Reid International Airport on Sunday morning, ran off the end of the runway, and struck a perimeter fence. Wahlberg later said, “Just finished praying and I looked out the window and thought we are not going up in the air today and all is well okay don't worry.”
Eight people were on board the Dassault Falcon 50, and the Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the incident. Audio from air traffic control captured the Falcon 50 being cleared for takeoff before the tower realized it was not airborne, then asked, “7 sierra golf... You okay?” The reply came back, “Aborting, aborting.”
Harry Reid International Airport response
Emergency vehicles were sent after the jet went off the runway, and airport operations were briefly disrupted by a ground stop and a waved-off landing. That sequence gives the incident a wider operational footprint than a single aborted departure: one runway event was enough to affect both departing and arriving traffic for a short period.
The aircraft remained on the other side of the airport’s perimeter fence after the incident, and the fence had already been repaired. Reed Yadon said the aircraft likely was traveling at close to 150 miles an hour at the time of the incident, a speed that makes the stop itself the standout fact in the chain of events.
Reed Yadon on the stop
“That's pretty fast, and to get that aircraft stopped in that distance, that's pretty good,” Yadon said. “In the scheme of things, this was about as - it was textbook. Everybody did what they should”
Wahlberg’s plane was moving fast enough that the more important question is not the drama of the skid but the decision that came before it. The FAA did not say why the flight crew aborted takeoff, so the investigation now has to sort out whether the problem came from the aircraft or from a human failure.
FAA review and records
Yadon said investigators will work through multiple layers of evidence. “Was the cause within the aircraft, or was it a human failure?” he said. “They'll look at both, go over training records, go over all the maintenance records on the aircraft.”
He added, “And they have a cockpit voice recorder in the aircraft, so they have a lot of data” and “They'll have security cameras from Harry Reid.” For passengers and operators, that means the next phase is not speculation but record review, with the airplane’s data and airport footage likely to shape the finding that follows the runway stop.
