Tuesday the City of Madisonville and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) held a press conference to discuss the beginning stages of the plane crash investigation.
Investigators say a plane took off from Port Isabel, Texas around 9:30 a.m. on Sunday and crashed just yards away from the Madisonville Municipal Airport runway around midnight Monday.
The impact killed Apolinar Diaz of Kansas City, and injured the five passengers who were all transported to hospitals. Officials say they have no update on their conditions or how they are all related.
NTSB Investigator John Brannen said he arrived at the crash site Monday and finished examining the wreckage Tuesday afternoon.
Brannen says as far as they can tell, there were no prior issues to the plane that caused the crash. He said all passengers, except for the pilot, appeared to be wearing their seatbelts.
“The examination of the airplane focuses on examining the control system, the engine, the different parts of the airplane to see if there were any issues not caused by the impact and we did not find any issues that were existing prior to the impact,” said Brannen. “Based on what we have seen, we didn’t see any deficiencies in the aircraft. The other aspects are pilot, weather, and stuff like that, that we’ll take a look at as the investigation goes on.”
Brannen says the plane was in landing mode when it began to hit trees off Grant Road just south of the airport.
The pilot was not in communication with air control prior to the crash but Brannen says certain airports like Madisonville Municipal Airport do not require it.
