The engine of the small plane that crashed into a residential building in Keene, New Hampshire, last month was making abnormal sounds during its takeoff and short flight, witnesses told federal investigators.
The crash killed the two men on board, Lawrence Marchiony of Massachusetts and Marvin David Dezendorf of Vermont, on the night of Oct. 21. The plane, a Beech A24R, "was destroyed" when it crashed into a storage unit attached to an apartment building on lower Main Street, about half a mile north of Keene Dillant-Hopkins Airport, according to a preliminary report released Friday by the National Transportation Safety Board.
Two pilots at the airport heard abnormal engine sounds from the plane as it accelerated up the runway and rose into the air. One said "it never sounded smooth during the entire time the airplane was on the runway or while airborne," according to the report.
Witnesses who watched the plane's takeoff said it appeared to take a shallow climb, then leveled off, all while "the poor engine sound continued." One person on the ground half a mile north-northeast of the airport heard a "pop pop" sound as the plane flew by at an altitude of about 50 feet, though it stopped as the plane descended, the NTSB said.
The pilots on board didn't make any distress calls during the short, doomed flight, according to the report, which didn't give a suspected cause of the crash.
Both of the plane's occupants were pilot-rated. Tim Monville, a senior air safety investigator at the NTSB, had previously said at a news conference that the cabin, cockpit and both wings were consumed by the flames that broke out in the crash.
No one on the ground was injured in the crash. Keene Mayor George Hansel has said the plane hit a two-story barn connected to a multi-family apartment building. All eight people were evacuated from the apartment building due to the subsequent fire.
The building sustained significant damage to an estimated 20% to the rear of the structure, and it will remain empty until it can be further assessed.
“We are very fortunate in some ways that the plane didn’t hit a part of the building where people were,” Hansel said. “This obviously could have been much worse, but any loss of life is a tragedy.”
Hansel said the plane was owned by Monadnock Aviation, which is based at the airport. He said it was unclear where the plane was headed.
