Redwood Shores Plane Crash Report Released

The National Transportation Safety Board has released a fact-finding report on a fatal 2010 Redwood Shores airplane crash that killed three people.

The report, released Thursday, spells out the facts surrounding the Sept. 2, 2010, crash of a Beech 65 Queen Air that lost control shortly after taking off from the San Carlos Airport. Three people were killed when the plane did a nosedive into the Redwood Shores Lagoon, including plane owner Robert Borrmann, 91, the founder of R.E. Borrmann's Steel Co. in East Palo Alto.

While the report does not draw conclusions about the cause of the crash, the NTSB expects to release its conclusions within the next few weeks, according to Air Safety Investigator Michael Huhn.

The plane took off shortly before noon in clear daylight conditions for a flight to South County Airport in San Martin, in Santa Clara County, according to the report. It was expected to climb about three miles and then take a left turn, but instead it rolled and turned to the right within a mile of the runway and descended in a sharp nosedive, according to witnesses.

There were no radio transmissions received from the pilot, according to the report. The plane reached a maximum altitude of 500 feet and was airborne for only about 40 seconds. Investigators learned from the son of one of the passengers that some maintenance activity had occurred on one of the engines in the weeks before the accident, but no records of the repairs could be located, the report said.

--Bay City News