Actor Morgan Freeman’s SyberJet SJ30 ran off the runway at Mississippi’s Tunica Municipal Airport at about 6:15 p.m. local time on Saturday “after diverting following a reported possible blown tire and hydraulic problem,” according to a preliminary accident/incident report released today by the FAA.
The twinjet, N30GZ, suffered “minimal damage” according to Tunica Municipal Airport officials, while Freeman and his pilot, Jimmy Hobson, were uninjured in the incident. “We are supporting both the FAA and NTSB investigation,” a SyberJet spokesman told AIN.
The flight’s intended destination was Sugar Land Regional Airport in Houston, where Freeman was headed to record a segment for the TV series The Story of God. Reports indicate that one of the SJ30’s tires blew shortly after takeoff from Fletcher Field in Clarksdale, Miss., at 3:04 p.m. According to FlightAware, the aircraft then circled the area for almost three hours while Hobson apparently attempted to troubleshoot the issue.
Freeman is a longstanding proponent of the SJ30 program. He took delivery of N30GZ (S/N 10) in 2009 and in May last year was announced as the launch customer for the follow-on SyberJet SJ30i and longer-range SJ30x, both of which sport new Honeywell Primus Epic 2.0/SyberVision cockpits.