Investigators seek clues in small jet crash that killed 1 in Texas, where bystanders rushed to help
Investigators combed through wreckage Wednesday for clues to why a business jet crashed on a Texas highway, killing one person on board after its pilots reported mechanical problems while requesting an emergency landing at a nearby airport.
The fiery crash late Tuesday in Laredo near the Mexican border sent bystanders racing from their cars to help police rescue passengers and crew from the burning aircraft. The crash killed Joshua Baer, a leader in Texas’ technology and startup sectors, the president of Baer's company said.
Video from the frantic scene showed someone trying to smash the cockpit glass with a sledgehammer, while others used makeshift levers as they worked to open the plane's door. Local officials said a firefighter entered the smoke-filled jet to extract one person still inside after the rest had escaped.
“While the loss of life is deeply regrettable, it is nothing short of a miracle that this tragedy did not become a mass fatality event,” Laredo Mayor Victor Treviño said during a news conference Wednesday.
Two pilots and three teenagers survived the crash and have since been released from the hospital, according to the Laredo Police Department. A dog on board that suffered from smoke inhalation was also expected to survive, said Jose Baeza, an investigator with the police department.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known. The Federal Aviation Administration was investigating along with the National Transportation Safety Board.
Laredo Police Chief Miguel Rodriguez Jr. said investigators working to reconstruct the crash were at the crash site Wednesday.
Baer, 50, was known as a central figure in Austin’s turbocharged evolution as a tech hub. He was the founder and chief executive of Capital Factory, which helps entrepreneurs connect with investors and others to launch their businesses.
“The number of lives Josh impacted in Austin, across Texas, and throughout the technology community is impossible to measure,” Capital Factory President Bryan Chambers said in a post on LinkedIn.
Capital Factory executives did not immediately return phone messages Wednesday from The Associated Press.
Baer lived in Austin with his wife and three children, according to his LinkedIn page. He recently taught a student entrepreneur class at the University of Texas at Austin.
“I help people quit their jobs and become entrepreneurs,” Baer said on his LinkedIn page.
The Cessna Citation Latitude twin jet departed Tuesday evening from the Mexican resort city of San José del Cabo and was bound for Austin, Texas, the FAA said in a statement.
The plane was operated by NetJets, a company owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway that lets people buy part ownership in private jets. NetJets said in a statement it was cooperating with authorities.
The jet went down at about 10 p.m. Tuesday on the Loop 20 highway, just a few minutes after its pilots radioed the local airport seeking to make an emergency landing. Their call to air traffic controllers “mentioned low fuel and a power outage,” Laredo International Airport Director Gilberto Sanchez said.
“They had mechanical issues and they lost communication with the tower,” Sanchez said Wednesday.
Dashcam video posted on social media showed the aircraft careening down the highway and knocking down a light post before stopping near the airport. The jet also barreled into a car, sending one motorist to a hospital in stable condition, Baeza said.
Five officers treated at a hospital for smoke inhalation have since been released, according to Rodriguez.
NetJets, started as a private jet charter service in 1964, had never had a fatal crash before Tuesday. Aviation safety experts interviewed Wednesday praised the company's safety record.
It shouldn't take investigators long to get a good idea of what caused the crash, in part because both pilots survived, former NTSB investigator Alan Diehl said.
The flight’s final minutes suggest the plane may have lost power to both engines and been attempting to glide into the Laredo airport, said Jeff Guzzetti, a former FAA and NTSB investigator.
“I think they just ran out of altitude and airspeed toward the end there,” Guzzetti said.
Aviation safety expert Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the Transportation Department, wondered if the jet had a fuel leak based on the pilots reporting they were running low. The jet has a range of 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers), roughly three times the distance of their planned flight to Austin.
Ultimately, Schiavo said, a lack of fuel may have prevented more death and destruction.
“Luckily, the plane didn’t explode in a fireball,” she said.
The Texas crash was the third significant aviation accident in as many days. A B-52 bomber crashed Monday during a test flight at Edwards Air Force Base in California and killed all eight people aboard, while on Sunday, 12 people were killed when a plane on a skydiving outing in Missouri crashed.
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Collins reported from Hartford, Connecticut; Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska; and Golden reported from Seattle. AP journalists Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, and Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina, contributed to this report.
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