Details emerge on plane crash
Full report into fireball that left 3 in the hospital likely to take a year
The plane that crashed April 25 in the backyard of a Pompano Beach home had three fliers aboard with varying levels of pilot experience before their flight ended in a fireball.
The pilot, working for a flight school, and two students — a private pilot and a pilot-rated passenger — were seriously injured in the crash and a post-impact fire that consumed the cockpit and fuselage, according to a preliminary report released Wednesday from the National Transportation Safety Board.
The agency will likely issue two more reports on the crash: One in six months may outline more facts, and another in a year that may find a probable cause for the accident. Keeping that rough timeline will depend on whether those in the plane are able to talk with investigators, an official said.
The Monday afternoon of the crash, an air traffic controller in the tower at the Pompano Beach Airpark watched the Beech twin-engine plane make a normal departure shortly before 3 p.m. He told investigators the plane made a right turn, followed by a sharp left turn before the nose pointed steeply toward the ground.
The plane disappeared from view behind trees and there was an explosion, the NTSB said. The crash happened in the 900 block of North Harbor Drive, about five blocks southeast of the airpark and Federal Highway.
As it descended from about 450 feet, the aircraft struck the roof of a house, where
pieces of its left wing were found. When the wing struck the roof, the fuel tank ruptured and a section of the house caught fire.
The plane continued its 150-foot path, colliding with awooden fence, trees, and a concrete wall before resting in the backyard of a home next to the first one that was struck, the NTSB said.
Local authorities identified Geoffrey White, 40, of Fort Lauderdale as the pilot. Sylvia Coello Mena, 23, of Ecuador, and Fernando Quispe Diaz, 25, of Peru, were his students.
All three were taken to the burn unit at Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. A hospital spokeswoman said Wednesday that consent to release health information about the male patients has not been given, but that Mena’s condition was improved from critical, when she arrived at the facility, to good.
White reported 1,000 flight hours during his February physical with the Federal Aviation Administration. He held a commercial pilot certificate for single and multi-engine planes and flying while using instruments, and held flight instructor certificates for those categories, too.
Diaz, the male student, held a private pilot certificate for a single-engine plane. He could operate a plane using instruments and had flown about 218 hours.
His last FAA physical was in November.
He was in the left front seat next to the instructor at the time of the crash that happened under clear skies with moderate breezes. Mena, the female student who was also a pilot, was in the rear of the plane.
The aircraft was operated by Florida Aviation Academy in Pompano Beach.
On Wednesday, 10 days after the crash, contractors were filling two dumpsters with debris fromthe backyards of three homes that were in the path of plane as it fell fromthe sky.
A resident at the home that was first struck by the plane declined to comment.
Across the street, neighbor Garrie Mitchell said it appeared the affected families were trying to regain a sense of normalcy, and described how one of those homeowners was clipping hedges in her front yard.
But the crash that left people on the ground unharmed is not something the neighborhood that is beneath flight paths for the nearby airpark will soon forget.
“I saw [the airplane] hit and I saw the explosion,” Mitchell said. “That’s close enough in one lifetime.”