Today, October 19th, a Corporate McDonnell Douglas MD-87 crashed at Houston Executive Waller County Airport, USA after overrunning the runway.
According to the latest information, the 34 year old aircraft, with registration N987AK, overran runway 36 during an aborted take-off across the perimeter fence; it then ended up about 300m further north, where it caught fire and burned to destruction. All of the 21 people on board, including three crew members, survived the accident however one person was taken to the hospital with back injuries.
ABC13 states that the plane was headed to Boston for a trip to the AL Championship Series games.
The aircraft was originally delivered to Finnair in January 1988; in November 2000 it changed over to Aeromexico and after that in 2007 to Noybim LLC, it was then transferred to Rice Aviation Group in 2014. Finally in 2015 it was turned into a VIP configuration and was bought by 987 Investments LLC.
Cover Photo: Twitter/JACDEC via ABC13Houston
Yes, a no flaps attempted takeoff was the first thing in my mind as well.
Maybe the redundancies put in place to avoid flapless takeoffs were mandated for commercial flights and not for private aircraft. Just guessing but it sure looks like a no flaps takeoff event.
It’s my understanding that after the Northwest Airlines MD-80 crash, redundancies were put in place to avoid flapless takeoffs.
The runway is 6600 ft, so plenty long for an MD-87. I wonder if they miscalculated V1, or if they attempted to abort the takeoff after V1 (because of an engine issue), or if they were overweight (but this seems unlikely due to the light load).
If everything was done by the books (flaps correctly deployed, correct weight, V1 correctly calculated, no abort attempted after V1, etc.), then it will be interesting to see what (if any) changes are implemented.
I bet they didn’t extend the flaps or something like that
Wow, dramatic pics. I’m glad they survived.