Canadian Air Ambulance Jet Skids Off Runway At Harry Reid Airport, No Injuries

A plane skidded off a runway at Harry Reid International Airport just after 1:30 a.m. Friday, coming to a stop in the dirt as it prepared for takeoff. No one aboard the aircraft was injured, according to Las Vegas Metro Police.

The aircraft had arrived from Toronto Thursday evening and was preparing to head back when it left the runway during its takeoff roll, police told KTNV, which captured video of the overnight emergency response. The station reports the aircraft is believed to be operated by SkyCare, a Canadian air ambulance company. KTNV said it reached out to both SkyCare and the airport for more information.

SkyCare, founded in 2006 and headquartered in Sioux Lookout, Ontario, runs a fleet of more than 20 aircraft, including IAI Westwind jets, Metroliner turboprops, and Piper Navajo twins, according to the Pilot Career Center. The company has completed more than 20,000 medevac patient transfers and 16,500 charter flights, per SkyCare's own account, and it conducts round-the-clock cross-border medical evacuations between Canada and the United States - which explains why one of its aircraft would be making an overnight run between Toronto and Las Vegas.

How Airport Crews Respond To A Runway Excursion

Field emergencies at Harry Reid fall under the joint jurisdiction of the Clark County Fire Department's Aircraft Rescue and Fire Fighting division and airport operations staff, who conduct immediate runway safety sweeps after any off-tarmac incident, according to AirNav. Runway movements are typically halted until firefighters confirm there are no fuel leaks or structural hazards before operations resume.

The airport's layout includes four main runways, with 8L/26R stretching 14,535 feet as its longest, and dedicated fixed-base operator facilities on the west side of the airfield that serve private and air ambulance jets, according to AOPA. That infrastructure is built to handle exactly the kind of general aviation and medevac traffic SkyCare's flight represents, even as the airport juggles heavy commercial schedules on its east-west runways.

A Pattern Of Runway Incidents At A Busy Hub

Friday's excursion is not the first runway mishap at Harry Reid in recent memory. In January, a British Airways passenger flight lost an entire tire during takeoff, though the tire detached on airport property without causing infrastructure damage or injuries, according to FOX5 Vegas. And back in February 2022, a Sun Country Airlines Boeing 737 suffered a main landing gear collapse on touchdown, skidding along the runway surface, per the Aviation Safety Network.

The National Transportation Safety Board also issued a final report in April on a July 2025 United Airlines flight that suffered substantial tail strike damage landing on runway 26L, an accident the NTSB classified as a Class 4 event tied to pilot flare handling, according to AeroInside. Runway excursions, in which an aircraft veers off or overruns a runway during takeoff or landing, rank as the most common type of aviation accident worldwide, with general aviation and non-commercial flights facing a statistically higher risk than scheduled airlines, per TarmacView.

A Busy Airfield For Commercial And Medical Flights Alike

Harry Reid International handled 54,989,185 passengers in 2025, its third-busiest year on record, a volume that comes alongside substantial general aviation and emergency medical transport traffic through the airfield, Hoodline has previously reported. That scale of activity means medevac operators like SkyCare are just one part of a constant overnight flow of aircraft moving through one of the country's busiest hubs.

SkyCare has also faced regulatory scrutiny before. In March 2024, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada published a report on an October 2023 incident in which a SkyCare Piper PA-31-350 was misfueled with the wrong type of fuel at Pickle Lake Airport in Ontario, according to the board's findings. It remains unknown whether the aircraft involved in Friday's runway excursion was a jet, turboprop, or twin-engine model, or whether medical crew or patients were aboard during the takeoff roll. It is also not yet known whether the NTSB or FAA will open a formal investigation into the incident.