Plane crash victims to leave hospital, investigation ongoing
October 14, 2011, 04:03 pm
According to the Orlando Sentinel, two victims of a recent plane crash are due to be released from the hospital in the coming days, a remarkable turn of events following a harrowing plane crash on a busy highway in Hollywood, Florida.
National Transportation Safety Board officials are still investigating the Socata TBM 700 crash. The plane was on its way to North Perry Airport when it reportedly lost power and began rapidly descending. The pilot, Alain Jaubert of Julos, France, tried to maintain enough altitude to make it to the nearby airport, but crashed on the busy highway. Miraculously, the plane did not collide with any vehicles and the only injuries were to Jaubert and his passenger, Donato Pinto, an airplane mechanic.
According to the Miami Herald, motorists stopped to aid the occupants of the plane, dragging them from the wreckage as quickly as possible, fearing an explosion.
"I just acted on instinct," Carlos Parodi, who extricated Jaubert and Pinto from the badly damaged plane, told the Herald. "I thought about the dangers involved and I went ahead and took a chance on the [plane] not blowing up."
Although NTSB officials confirmed the engine failure, they did not go so far as to say that the engine failure caused the crash. The pilot and passenger were the only reported injuries, as both suffered minor lower back fractures, cuts and bruises. The plane was in the midst of a seven mile flight from Opa-locka Airport following a round of maintenence, the details of which are still unavailable.
"It was the first flight out of maintenance," NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway told the Herald. "One of the first things we’re going to look at is what type of maintenance was involved."
A full investigation and analysis is likely to take about a year, and both sources note that the airplane was not equipped with the sophisticated black box data recording technology that can be used to diagnose accidents in major airliners. Neither the pilot nor the passenger has agreed to an interview, though the Sentinel reports that both have been questioned extensively by both the NTSB and the Federal Aviation Administration.
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