At 8:30 a.m., despite clear skies with excellent visibility of about , the flight paths of the two aircraft intersected about southwest of Las Vegas.
The fighter jet-its right wing and right tailplane torn away by the collision-left a trail of fragments as it arced downward, and crashed west of the small community of Sloan into a hilly area of uninhabited desert, several miles south of the DC-7 crash site.