3 dead after plane crashes into car near Houston airport

Flight traffic at Hobby Airport was not altered by the crash.

Air traffic control audio indicates controllers told the female pilot she was flying too high and has to turn around to land at Hobby Airport.

PILOT: So am I turning a right base now, 52gulf?

“We’ll come back around and we got it this time”, an air traffic controller said.

The plane was equipped with an emergency parachute system that is rocket-deployed and would allow an aircraft to safely descend when used.

Latson said the next step is to perform a thorough examination of the aircraft to determine if insufficient plane maintenance had a role in the passenger’s death.

A dispatcher says two people in the plane were killed.

Lozano said the plane was equipped with a parachute but it did not deploy.

The silver-colored plane went down in an Ace hardware parking lot a few blocks away from the airport. It destroyed an employee’s vehicle, but no one on the ground was hurt. The spokesman said the plane nose-dived into the ground during the third try.

Lewis told KFOR-TV that Dana Gray had owned the plane for more than two years and called her a “very, very safe pilot”.

Susan Conklin says she was in her business Thursday when she heard “a great big loud noise, like a bomb and a real screechy noise”. When I looked out I saw the plane in the parking lot… It was less than a mile from the airport, not far from the runway the air traffic controllers had cleared for the pilot to land.

Lozano says he doesn’t know if the plane had taken off or was trying to land at the airport. She tried again but the same thing happened.

It was also not known if the plane was approaching the airport or had just departed. The National Transportation Safety Board plans to return to the crash site Friday to clean up. Safe Aviation couldn’t be reached for comment.

Authorities have not released the names of the three who were killed in Thursday’s crash.