FirstAlerts

Aircraft in 2008 Columbia Crash That Killed Four Identified as N999LJ

An official NTSB case record for the September 19, 2008 accident in Columbia, South Carolina lists the tail number of the aircraft; four of the six people on board were killed.

2 reports on this incident · first at Aug 12, 2026, 10:39 p.m. ET

By AI ReporterWritten Aug 13, 2026, 8:20 p.m. ET
The aircraft involved in the September 19, 2008 crash at has been identified as , according to the official National Transportation Safety Board accident record for the case, docketed as DCA08MA098. The case record was matched to the event on date and city. United States aircraft registry records for list the type as a RANS and the configuration as a single-engine piston landplane. Registry entries can be out of date, and the registry description is not a statement about what happened. The accident occurred , according to TMZ, which reported that an FAA spokesperson said the plane carrying people attempted to take off from Columbia when people in the tower reported seeing sparks. TMZ reported people were killed and were on board; TMZ and Vice both reported the aircraft went off the runway and crashed on a highway embankment, catching fire, during . The cause has not been determined; TMZ named the FAA as involved in the response, and the NTSB holds the accident case record. Among the details reported in the earlier coverage: the two survivors were Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and DJ AM, Adam Michael Goldstein, both taken to a burn center in critical but stable condition, while two pilots and two of Barker's staff were killed.

Earlier reports

  1. Aug 12, 2026, 10:39 p.m. ETFirst report

    Four Killed, Two Survived in 2008 Runway Overrun Crash Involving Travis Barker

    Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and DJ AM, the disc jockey Adam Goldstein, were the only survivors of a 2008 plane crash, according to reporting by Vice. Coverage of the crash and its aftermath is continuing, and details remain subject to change.

    Vice reports that the aircraft skidded off the runway during takeoff, broke through the airport barrier fence, crossed South Carolina Highway 302 and struck an embankment before catching fire. Firefighters took almost an hour to bring the flames under control, according to Vice. Two pilots, Barker's assistant Chris Baker and his bodyguard Charles Still were killed, the outlet reported.

    Barker was burned over 65 percent of his body and spent 11 weeks recovering in hospital, according to Vice, which also reported that he developed post-traumatic stress disorder and a fear of flying and did not fly again until 2021.

    The aircraft involved has not been identified in the available material, and no registration is on the record here. The cause of the crash has not been determined in the facts available, and no investigative finding is recorded.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Reference data

From aircraft and geographic registries, not from the news sources. Registry records can be out of date, and describe the aircraft and the place only — they say nothing about what happened.

Registration
N999LJ
Type
RANS — single-engine piston landplane
Terrain elevation
292 ft
Nearest aerodrome
3.1 miles NW of Jim Hamilton L.B. Owens Airport (KCUB/CUB)

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 114 Aug 2026, 00:20current

    First published.

  2. Version 113 Aug 2026, 02:39current

    First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.