702, Monday afternoon

Dr Leach, welcome and thanks very much for your time. What is known about the crash, which is described by many as cataclysmic? The pilot apparently told the Miami Air Route Traffic Control Center, we're descending at ten thousand feet per minute. And then it sounds like that got even worse. Is a crash of a plane of this kind much more deadly for everybody, not only the people on board, but the people in the path of its flight?

Yeah, hi John, and nice to be with you, even on a tragic and weird accident like this one. But yeah, look, obviously, it's way too early to speculate as to exactly what happened here. But there's fairly clear evidence thanks to ATC air traffic control transmissions and reports of the weather and so on. So I think to answer your question, no, there are direct parallels between the way a business jet like this flies and an airliner flies. So there are

You can, by extension, say, well, the risks are the same. However, I think that airline pilots are certainly just a little more circumspect. They don't go charging into thunderstorms as it appears that this near Jet crew did. Yeah, it's an alarming situation for people on the ground. I mean, for example, a plane that's powered by propellers, is it easier to do an emergency landing with that kind of plane than it would be?

Be with a Learjet? Well, yeah, because generally the speeds are much slower. A Learjet in particular is known as something of a hot rod, a high-performance aircraft. And indeed, its performance is no better. In fact, in many respects, and that means that if it ends up losing its tail, as this one may well have done, then it really does go down like the missile we saw in those extraordinary clips from dash cams.

You were talking about the circumstances in which people take to the air and what might have been, you know, an indefense. I don't want to use the word indefensible, that may be too strong, but very pronounced risk. I mean, in South Africa, do we have very clear protocols on that? And crucially, do we have a means of enforcing it? I mean, the world of private aviation, how closely regulated is it in general? Yeah, so.

I'll try and be brief here, but private aviation, as you've called it, for business and commercial aviation like this, is incredibly safe as well. It's managed in many cases to the same or even better standards than the airlines are. Often the equipment is even newer and better than airliner equipment. So there's no significant risk, and indeed we very seldom hear of business jet crashes like this one. So I