First-responders unaware. The fire call at 12:20 p.m. was to a disastrous house fire. First-responders were unaware on arrival that the cause was a plane crash. The house was at 10792 Kyle Avenue near Great River Road and Noble Parkway. Image: Mike Deyo
Iowa plane on landing path to runway six miles away
BROOKYN PARK, Minn. – A small plane believed with four persons aboard crashed in a residential neighborhood in this northwest Minneapolis suburb. No one survived. The plane struck a house, which burst into flame. No one was home. This was about 12:20 p.m. Doorbell video showed the plane, a Socata TBM 700, nose-diving into the house. The plane was on a 260–mile flight from Des Moines. It was six miles short of a runway at the Blaine airport north of St. Paul. The names of those aboard were not available immediately. The pilot was in a gradual descent for the Blaine airfield. Aviation experts theorized the plane stalled after losing sufficient speed to remain airborne. The usual touchdown speed for a Socata TBM 700 is 92 mph.
Dropped like a rock from sky. Doorbell video shows the single-engine plane in vertical free fall into the house. Image: Curt Leitschuh
Socato TBM 700
The TBM is a high-performance single-engine turboprop. About 1,000 were built by the French company Socato beginning in1988. The design was based on an earlier plane built by Mooney Aircraft of Kerrville, Texas. The plane cruises at about 290 mph and as high as 31,000 feet. The range: 2,000 miles. With a full tank, the plane carries 290 gallons of fuel.