KVIG Informative

A Canadian air ambulance jet left the runway during takeoff at Harry Reid International Airport early Friday morning. No one was hurt — but it’s the third time in four years a plane has ended up somewhere other than the runway at Las Vegas’s main airport.

A general aviation aircraft skidded off a runway at Harry Reid International Airport just after 1:30 a.m. Friday, coming to a stop in the dirt during its takeoff roll, according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. No injuries were reported.

The aircraft experienced issues with its landing gear upon departure, according to airport officials. The plane had arrived from Toronto Thursday evening and was preparing to head back when it left the runway. It is believed to be operated by SkyCare, a Canadian air ambulance company founded in 2006 and headquartered in Sioux Lookout, Ontario, which says it has completed more than 20,000 medevac patient transfers.

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The runway was closed while crews worked to tow the aircraft off the pavement. It has since reopened, and the cause of the incident remains under investigation.

Friday’s incident is not the first runway excursion at Harry Reid in recent years. A British Airways passenger flight lost a tire during takeoff in January, though the tire detached on airport property without causing infrastructure damage or injuries. In February 2022, a Sun Country Airlines Boeing 737 suffered a main landing gear collapse on touchdown, skidding along the runway surface.

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 agency classified as a Class 4 event tied to pilot flare handling.

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Harry Reid handled nearly 55 million passengers in 2025, a 5.9% increase over the previous year, and the airport is currently in the early stages of a multibillion-dollar modernization plan intended to add capacity ahead of a projected 65 million-passenger ceiling by 2033.

No one was hurt Friday morning, and the runway reopened within hours. But as Harry Reid pushes toward record passenger volumes on aging infrastructure, four runway incidents since 2022 is a pattern worth watching — even when every one of them ends the same way this one did, with a tow truck and an open investigation instead of an emergency room.