BROOKSHIRE, Texas — The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has an update into their investigation of an October plane crash in Waller County.
The Boeing MD-87 was heading to Boston for an Astros game in the ALCS, but it never left the ground. It overran its runway and crashed through an airport fence before catching fire. All 23 passengers escaped the plane before it went up in flames, according to the NTSB. Two people were seriously hurt and another person had minor injuries.
The owner of the plane is developer James Alan Kent, who was one of the passengers in the plane. He sent a statement shortly after the crash saying he and his company would work with NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in their investigation.
What happened?
According to interviews with the flight crew, the issue started during callouts as they were getting ready to depart. The flight's captain and first officer were struggling to pull back on the control column. In an interview, the captain said it felt like the column was "in concrete."
The first officer then called abort and start slowing down the thrust reversers. The captain said the plane's autobrake system was in "rejected takeoff (RTO) mode," causing maximum wheel braking. That's when the plane broke through the fence and power lines before stopping about 1,400 feet away from the end of the runway.
The captain told the first officer to get out and that officer helped passengers evacuate the plane. The crew said they made sure all passengers were off of the plane before evacuating themselves.
Wreckage
Most of the plane was destroyed by the fire after the crash. Some parts were found between the crash at the fence and in the field where the plane stopped.
The fire didn't reach the tail of the plane, but investigators found that its left and right elevators were jammed. Both of their actuating cranks and links were also locked in an unusual position.
Those elevators are important for getting a plane off the ground. The NTSB is looking into whether they were damaged before or after the crash. Aviation Expert Josh Verde compares this incident to a similar rejected takeoff that led to a plane crash in 2017.
“And in that crash, what happened was, the plane was parked and some wind gusts actually cause physical damage to the flight control surfaces of that airplane that could not be detected by the flight crew," Verde said. "So it was kind of like a silent problem that really could not be detected until they went to try to fly the airplane."
Editor: The following report happened on Oct 19, the morning of the plane crash.