MD-87 crash at Houston Executive
On 19 October 2021, three crew members and eighteen passengers were very lucky to walk away without any serious injuries, after the privately owned McDonnell Douglas MD-87 (N987AK, msn 49404) burst into flames during a failed attempt to take-off from Houston Executive Airport's runway 36 (TX).
The aircraft went through a fence and took down power lines before it came to a stop about 500 metres past the end of the runway, in a field in the southeast corner of Waller County, which is not too far from the airport.
The former Finnar (OH-LMB), AeroMéxico (N204AM) and since April 2007 mainly operating in the private sector MD (still as N204AM, until 28 August 2015, when it became N987AK) is registered under the name of J. Alan Kent, who is the corporate owner of Flair Builders, a Houston-based custom homebuilder. Flair Builders confirmed the incident with Kent on board at the time.
Two sources additionally confirm that the aircraft was headed to Boston for a trip to the AL Championship Series games.
Meanwhile, utility company CenterPoint Energy said an outage impacting more than 1,800 customers near the scene of the crash was caused by the plane taking out an overhead powerline during take-off. Since the outage, power was restored to all but seventeen customers.
Photo's by Sam Chui and JACDEC