The pilots of the Learjet 60 aborted the takeoff at approximately 115 miles per hour. They had blown a tire. The aircraft skidded 1,700 feet down Runway 11 at Columbia Metropolitan Airport, careened through a perimeter fence, crossed a highway, and slammed into an embankment. The fuel tanks ruptured. The fuselage became a fireball. Four people died instantly: the two pilots, Barker’s security guard, and his assistant. The only survivors, blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and celebrity disc jockey Adam Goldstein, known as DJ AM, were thrown clear or escaped through a hole in the fuselage. Both men suffered severe burns.
The National Transportation Safety Board investigation pinpointed the cause as the crew’s failure to perform a pre-flight check of the aircraft’s anti-skid braking system, which had been deactivated for maintenance. During the aborted takeoff, without the anti-skid system, the tires overheated and failed. The blown tire was a symptom, not the cause. The report detailed a cascade of procedural neglect.
The crash had a grim, quiet afterlife. DJ AM, who had struggled with addiction, was found dead of a drug overdose less than a year later, a tragedy his family linked to the trauma of the crash. Barker became an advocate for victims of aviation accidents and developed a profound fear of flying, traveling only by bus for years.
The event is a footnote in pop culture history, overshadowed by the celebrities involved. It remains, however, a precise case study in how a single unchecked box on a maintenance log can lead to a chain of events that ends in fire on a South Carolina roadside.