A small jet carrying the owner of NASCAR's top team and his wife lost its brakes and crash landed at a Key West airport Monday evening but the couple suffered only minor injuries.
The Gulfstream 150 aircraft carrying team owner Rick Hendrick and his wife Linda, ran off the runway at the Key West International Airport Monday night stopping on an unpaved safety area built in May.
The crash comes just seven years after a previous jet owned by the Hendricks' crashed in Virginia killing the couple's son, Ricky, Mr Hendrick's brother and his twin nieces.
The couple had minor injuries and the pilot and co-pilot were taken in Lower Keys Medical Centers as a precaution but were all released early Tuesday morning.
They have since safely returned to North Carolina with Mr Hendrick diagnosed with a broken rib and a broken clavicle, and Mrs Hendrick treated for minor cuts and bruises.
Both pilots were evaluated and released without injury.
Commenting on the length of runway the plane overshot, Airport Director Peter Horton told the Miami Herald that 'the outcome would have been different and probably catastrophic' without the addition of the added safety area.
The plane skidded through the provided 4,800-foot runway before stopping in the safety area spanning 600 feet.
The plane is registered to Jimmie Johnson Racing II Incorporated in Charlotte, N.C.
Johnson is a five-time defending NASCAR champion and drives for Hendrick Motorsports, which Rick Hendrick owns.
Besides Johnson, Hendrick also fields cars for four-time champion Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Mark Martin.
The team recently celebrated its 199th career victory in the Sprint Cup Series.
'It was a real big scare. Very frightening to hear,' Earnhardt told reporters in Las Vegas, where he was attending the annual SEMA show, which showcases automotive specialty-equipment.
'I'm very glad that he and everybody appears to be OK.
The 2004 crash of Mr Hendrick's personal jet, on October 24th, was en route to a race in Martinsville, Va., when it went down killing all 10 passengers onboard.
Among them, his 24-year-old son, Ricky Hendrick was a NASCAR stock car driver and partial owner at Hendrick Motor Sports.
The National Transportation and Safety Board found that the crash occurred because of pilot error.
According to the Monroe County Sheriff's Office on Monday night's crash, the pilot and co-pilot radioed that the plane had no brakes upon landing in Key West.
Horton said the plane ran off the runway, and then 100 feet beyond a 600-foot safety area that was finished in May.
'If we hadn't done that, it likely would have been a different story,' Horton said of the safety area that is meant as a runway overrun space.
Photographs of the crash show the plane largely intact and with its nose resting on the ground about 20 feet in front of a chain-linked airport boundary fence.
The NTSB will investigate the cause of the crash.
When Private Jet is meant for safer and secured way of travel, the aviation company and the pilots should have more concern about the travelers and the flight too.
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