A general aviation plane carrying actor Donnie Wahlberg skidded off Runway 1L at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas shortly after starting its departure on Sunday, Oct. 18, at about 11 a.m., and contacted a perimeter fence. The FAA responded with a ground stop for the airport and the closure of two runways. Officials reported no injuries.
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Wahlberg said afterward that he, his team and friends had been on board, and he credited the pilots with keeping everyone safe. The runways reopened after inspections and the ground stop was lifted, but the episode shows how quickly one aircraft leaving the pavement can ripple through the schedule of a major airport that handles a steady stream of departures and arrivals. The first accounts left out the aircraft type and the operator.
The Runway 1L skid and the perimeter fence
The ARFF Working Group’s daily roundup for Oct. 19 summarized the event in a single sentence: the aircraft skidded off Runway 1L on departure and contacted a perimeter fence. A report from FOX5 Las Vegas dated Oct. 18 gave the same sequence, saying the plane left the pavement during takeoff and hit the fence at about 11 a.m. local time. Neither account says how far the aircraft traveled beyond the runway edge, what shape it was in afterward, or why it left the surface, and no official explanation appeared in either one.
Runway 1L is one of four at the airport, whose runways are designated 1L/19R, 1R/19L, 8L/26R and 8R/26L, according to the reference entry for the airport. The field sits in the unincorporated community of Paradise, Nevada, about five miles south of downtown Las Vegas, and is owned by Clark County. Both news accounts describe the aircraft only as a general aviation plane, so its make, model and owner remain unconfirmed.
The order of the reporting helps explain how much is known. FOX5 published on Sunday, Oct. 18, the same day, and by then the ground stop had already been lifted. Wahlberg’s own post followed on Sunday night, hours after the skid, and the ARFF Working Group folded both into its Monday digest. Because every outlet points back to the same few facts, the core of the story did not change between versions: one departure, one runway, one fence, a brief halt to traffic and a passenger list that happened to include a well-known actor.
The FAA ground stop and two closed runways
The FAA issued a ground stop and closed two runways, according to the roundup. A ground stop holds flights headed for an airport on the ground at their points of origin so controllers can work through the traffic already in the system. The FAA said that before the stop was lifted, departures bound for Harry Reid were averaging delays of 1 hour and 10 minutes. FOX5 reported that Runways 1L and 1R reopened after inspections, which means the pavement was checked before regular operations resumed.
Airport officials told travelers to check with their airlines about flight status, an instruction that left individual schedule decisions with the carriers rather than the airport. The FAA’s figure of 1 hour and 10 minutes is an average for flights bound for Harry Reid before the stop was lifted, so individual waits could have been shorter or considerably longer, and none of the reports gives a count of delayed or canceled flights or a time at which the stop ended.
Wahlberg’s account of a plane that “took some lumps”
Wahlberg confirmed he was aboard in an Instagram post on Sunday night, and FOX5 also embedded a second video clip from him. He wrote that the pilots had steered everyone clear of “a serious disaster,” and in the line that drew the most attention he said the airplane took some lumps but the people aboard did not. The claim that he and his team were on the flight rests on his own social media, not on an airline or airport statement, which is a distinction readers should keep in view while the facts are still thin.
Several questions were unanswered in the reports reviewed. FOX5 does not mention an NTSB investigation, and the ARFF roundup names no investigating agency, so the status of any federal review was not stated. The first accounts also did not say why the aircraft left Runway 1L, how many people were aboard, or who owned the plane. The NTSB describes its process as beginning when it is notified of a transportation accident and its leadership decides to launch an investigation, with the full effort often running 12 to 24 months, so a final explanation, if one is opened, would not be quick.
Until more detail appears, the confirmed record is short and consistent across both accounts: a Sunday morning departure on Oct. 18, a skid off Runway 1L, a perimeter fence, no reported injuries, an FAA ground stop, two runways closed and then reopened, and a celebrity passenger thanking his pilots for a safe outcome.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.
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