There was internal damage to the engine of a small plane that crashed into a home and burned over the weekend, killing three people onboard, a federal safety investigator said.
National Transportation Safety Board investigator Doug Brazy said Tuesday that investigators found a hole in the engine's crankcase but don't know the cause. He said the engine will be examined at a lab operated by its manufacturer.
"What we know new is that there's a hole in the crank case of the engine," Brazy explained. "How that hole got there, what caused it, that's the part we don't know yet."
The pilot had told air traffic control his engine was failing just before the crash in a Plainville, Massachusetts, neighborhood on Sunday evening.
Authorities have tentatively identified those killed as Dr. Joseph Richard Kalister, of Knoxville, Tennessee; his wife, Betty Kalister; and their teenage daughter, Nicole Kalister. The daughter had been scheduled to attend a new-student orientation at Northeastern University in nearby Boston this week.
Four people who lived in the house escaped unharmed.
Brazy said the single-engine Beechcraft plane was about 15 miles from the Norwood Airport, where it was headed, and had a cruising speed of about 200 mph before it went down. He said the plane wasn't equipped with a flight data recorder, which wasn't required, and investigators haven't found helpful data on the plane's instruments.
"What we had begun looking at yesterday and finished this morning was looking for any instrumentation that may capture sata nonetheless," Brazy said. "We haven't found any."
Brazy said investigators found the plane's control cables were intact. He said the plane would be removed from the crash site Tuesday and taken to a facility in Delaware for further evaluation.
