PEARLAND, Texas – A faulty electrical system in an airplane ended up with two small private planes crashing into one other during a landing at Pearland Regional Airport.
The accident happened on Dec. 11, around the same time another airplane ran out of gas and crashed onto a highway in Victoria, Texas, according to the FAA.
According to Read Flake, one of three people aboard the small plane, the crash in Pearland happened on the runway after landing very close behind another plane. Read said his friend at the controls closely followed the plane to the runway after the electronics in their plane failed, leaving them with no way to communicate with others.
“It was a beautiful, clear day,” Flake told KPRC 2′s Gage Goulding. “We’ll fly down to Galveston, grab some lunch. It will be great.”
Flake’s friend, a 20-year pilot, picked him up at Pearland Regional Airport before taking off for Galveston.
The trouble started after the trio began getting ready to fly back.
“When we went out to the runway to come to get back in the plane after lunch, it wouldn’t start right away,” he said.
The plane’s battery had died, but after a quick jump start, they were on their way again.
“We didn’t think too much of it,” said Flake. “Once we got in the air, the headset stopped working.”
Unfortunately, this was just the start.
“The radio went out and the avionics, the navigation. And so, then we knew it was a bigger problem,” Flake explained.
This means they had no way to tell anyone else that they had a problem. Their number one priority: getting the plane on the ground.
Gage Goulding: “What was it like inside the cockpit in that moment?”
Read Flake: “I mean, it got pretty tense.”
Read started recording on his phone as they approached the runway. His friend at the controls, following another plane coming in for a landing.
“Cessna, there’s a Grumman landing right behind you,” air traffic controllers said to the plane Read’s crew was following. “They’re about to hit you.”
It was the only warning that the pilot received for what was about to happen.
“When he landed, he hit his brakes,” Flake said. “He was just maybe in a hurry or whatever and just like, you know, and started to turn. And at that point, that’s when we got in trouble. We couldn’t slow down fast enough. And we just plowed right into the side of him.”
Video inside the plane suddenly gets erratic with the sound of a collision, crunching metal and engines suddenly coming to a stop.
“The propeller tore into the fuselage and made a big mess of it,” Flake said.
Somehow, everyone walked away from the crash. The worst of the injuries were a few scratches to Read’s right arm.
Most of us would probably walk away from flying if we were able to walk away from a crash like that.
But not Read.
“I do have a little bit of a history,” he said.
It’s a history of somehow cheating death.
“I’ve flown power paragliders,” he explained.”
It was one day in Utah several years ago when he had an accident.
“The wind came up and I dropped like a rock from about 50 feet. I hurt my spinal cord, and I was kind of temporarily paralyzed.”
He spent more than a year in a wheelchair. Even today, he’s still recovering.
Read Flake: “I still walk slowly and with a limp and everything, but at least I can walk.”
Gage Goulding: “Yet you still wanted to get up in the sky.”
Read Flake: “I love the view from up there and the freedom you feel.”
After defeating death not once, but twice, Read knows he was given a third chance to enjoy that freedom.
This time, with two feet on the ground.
“I believe in God and thankful for, you know, to Jesus Christ,” he said. “I’m thankful for that. Don’t want to push my luck, though.”
The FAA continues to investigate the accident.
