Collier County plane crash under investigation by National Transportation Safety Board

According to the FAA incident page on the crash, the aircraft experienced engine issues and crashed hitting two vehicles on the road and post-crash fire.

“Just feeling very bad for our people who are hurt and the families. We feel we pray for all of them,” said Ashraf Badir with the Department of Bioengineering at FGCU.

• READ MORE: At least 2 dead after twin-engine plane crashes on I-75 in Collier County

“They do happen, I would suggest that they’re relatively rare,” said Bob Foley.

WINK News reached out to the National Transportation Safety Board to see what’s next in the investigation.

“The NTSB responds to approximately 1200 of these types of crashes every year, and the purpose of their response is to conduct an investigation to get at the root of the cause of the crash. And in some cases, there may be several factors,” said Foley.

Investigators have wrapped up the on-scene portion of the investigation. The aircraft was recovered and transported to an undisclosed secure facility in Jacksonville Florida, and the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder were sent to the NTSB headquarters in Washington D.C. as well.

“They’re gonna look closely to the aircraft to see if there are any damage that can lead them to some findings. They have to check and put all the pieces together,” said Badir. “So, it’s damage analysis that usually takes place after any kind of accident, whether it be an aircraft or a building, or any help or structure.”

“It’s highly, highly unusual to have a situation where a plane would lose both engines. And to have that happen almost simultaneously raises questions perhaps about the engine performance, or the pilot performance, or perhaps the fuel or something like that. But it’s way too early to know, these are the kinds of things investigators will be looking for,” said retired CBS news correspondent Bob Orr.

Bob Foley has a commercial pilot’s license and was a military aviator. He said crashes like this are rare, and said NTSB investigations involve three primary areas: the pilot, the aircraft, and the operating environment.

“It’s not necessarily aimed at placing blame, but determining the cause, so that if it’s mechanical, it can be addressed with other like type aircraft, or if it pilot error, procedural reviews, and retraining may be necessary, all aimed at preventing scenarios from happening in the future,” Foley explained.

WINK News asked him about the reconstruction of the plane.

“It may be that the aircraft is too far damaged, however, is still a step that has to be taken. In most cases, a lot of the reconstruction is by computer-aided design, taking in all of the environmental factors as well as the age of the aircraft maintenance, and the behavior of the pilot, and the mechanical response by the aircraft” he said.

The National Transportation Safety Board said a preliminary report should be available in about 30 days.