HOUSTON — The National Transportation Safety Board gave an update to their investigation into what happened when two private jets collided at Hobby Airport.
The NTSB released the new information Wednesday in a post on X, formerly Twitter, at 12:30 p.m.
According to the NTSB, at 3:20 p.m. on Tuesday, a Hawker 850XP with three people onboard was planning to take off. The pilot was told by air traffic control to wait on Runway 22. That pilot, however, started to accelerate for takeoff and its wing hit the tail of the other aircraft, a Cessna 510 with five people onboard which had landed on a different runway.
According to the NTSB, the Hawker continued its takeoff before returning.
Fortunately, there were no injuries to anyone onboard.
The Houston Airport System said more than 130 flights were either canceled or delayed due to the collision.
The NTSB has a team of six people in Houston to investigate. They said a preliminary report will be available within 30 days on their website. The final report could take between 12 to 24 months. They said they’ll document the damage on both planes, conduct interviews with the pilots, air traffic control staff, and airport personnel, as well as review all radio communications between the airplanes and air traffic controllers, and arrival and departure procedures at Hobby Airport.
Hobby Airport was closed for around four hours Tuesday after the collision so that debris could be cleaned up. One aviation expert we talked to said this could have been much worse.
"It was a wing-to-rudder-type contact. It's going to be interesting if the pilots tried to abort or what elusive maneuvers they took," former commercial pilot and aviation expert Oliver Brown said. "This is a very fortunate outcome. This is the most serious infraction that pilots can be involved in."
The airport was under a complete ground stop while FAA officials did their necessary checks after the incident.