PALM BEACH GARDENS – The pilot of a small plane that ran off of a runway Oct. 8 at North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport felt a "slight shudder" as he accelerated, and then the plane's controls froze, a preliminary crash report says.
Seven members of an Indiana family were seriously injured when the plane dropped into a pond and partly flipped at the suburban Palm Beach Gardens site.
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The Allens were visiting relatives in South Florida. They were Joseph Allen and his wife, Diane Allen, both 70; their son Joseph, 36, and Joseph's wife, Angela Allen, 38; and that couple's children, Abrams McCarthy, 12, Logan Allen, 4, and Heidi Allen, 2.
Bystanders pulled all seven out of the plane. They were taken to St. Mary's Medical Center in West Palm Beach.
The last of the seven got out of the hospital and back to Indiana only last week, daughter Sarah Schuldt said Friday from Michigan. She said some suffered more serious injuries than others but "everybody is home and healing well at this time."
And, she said, "We're really appreciative of of everybody that helped out."
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The National Transportation Safety Board's preliminary report does not use names. It listed as its primary source the "pilot's son," who would be the younger Joseph Allen.
It said Allen was in the front passenger seat as the seven-seat, 50-year-old twin-engine Cessna 414 left for Claxton, Georgia, for refueling, then home to the airport in Columbus, Indiana, about 40 miles south of Indianapolis.
It said the younger Allen "noted no irregularities when his father performed the engine run-up. His father then taxied onto the runway, checked the trim for takeoff, applied brakes, and advanced the throttles to full power.
"Once at full rpm, his father released the brakes and the airplane began its takeoff roll. Shortly into the takeoff roll, he felt a momentary 'slight shudder' which appeared to come from the controls."
The younger Allen told the investigator that as the plane continued down the runway, he looked out the window and was thinking the plane should have "rotated," or come off the ground, by now. He noted the plane was traveling 10 to 15 knots – 11 to 17 mph – beyond "blue line speed," the optimum speed for wheels-up, but the plane stayed on the runway even as it continued to accelerate.
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"The airplane was running out of runway," the report said, and the younger Allen tried to pull back on the control yoke, but the controls would not move. He then pulled the throttles back to idle and "applied maximum braking."
At that moment, the younger Allen told the investigator, the plane likely was traveling between 120 and 130 knots, or 138 to 150 mph.
Family friend Christopher Markgraf, who lives in The Acreage, told The Palm Beach Post the day after the crash that, "about a third of the way down the runway, I said, 'Hey. They're in trouble.' They were going fast enough to fly, but they weren't coming up off the ground."
He said the plane's engines never lost power or even sputtered.
"I could see the plane just skipping along. It wanted to fly," Markgraf said. "I heard them kill the power and start trying to stop. There was not enough real estate."
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The NTSB report said the plane came to rest upright in about 5 feet of water about 450 feet beyond the end of the runway.
It said the fuselage and cabin were mostly intact, but the right wing and engine had separated. The left wing and engine were attached, but part of the left wing was sheared off, the report said.
A final NTSB report could take months, or as long as one or two years.
@eliotkpbp
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: NTSB: Pilot felt 'shudder,' controls froze before plane ran off north county airport runway
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