CLEARWATER, Fla. (WFLA) — Three people are dead after a plane crashed into a mobile home in Clearwater Thursday night.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the plane’s pilot and two people inside the mobile home were killed.
FlightAware, a flight tracking website, shows the single-engine plane had departed from Vero Beach and was scheduled to land at the Clearwater Air Park.
The pilot did report issues with the engine moments before drastically losing altitude.
An aviation expert, John Cox, said this type of plane, Beechcraft V35B, has been around since the 60s and is very reliable.
According to the retired captain, for something like this to happen is rare.
“Experienced what the pilot described as an engine problem or engine failure,” Cox said. “Where they were trying to glide to the Clearwater Executive Airport, and they didn’t quite have enough altitude to make it and ended up short of the runway.”
The plane, manufactured by Beechcraft, is one Cox said he has flown many times.
“A Beechcraft Bonanza, it’s a veteran airplane, it’s been in production for many decades, and it’s a wonderful airplane, I’ve flown them,” he said.
FlightAware shows the plane was going about 142 mph at 100 feet of altitude before the crash.
“For it to be over 100 to 110, [120] mph is a faster speed and the investigators will certainly want to look at, at why that was,” Cox said.
Cox said the investigation will look at if there was a problem with flight control, if the pilot was incapacitated, radar data, the weather, maintenance records, pilot training records, and all other components.
“I think the next step for all of us who are interested in determining what happened and how this tragedy unfolded, will be to wait for the NTSB preliminary report and see what we can learn from that,” Cox said.
Cox said we can expect the preliminary report in a couple of weeks, but it will take around 18 months to get the final report.