HOUSTON — Houston's William P. Hobby Airport was closed for more than three hours on Tuesday after two private planes crashed into each other on a runway.
According to Federal Aviation Administration officials, a Hawker business jet took off without permission and clipped a Cessna jet that had just landed at Hobby. No injuries were reported and it's unclear how many people were on board the planes.
The National Transportation Safety Board is sending a team to Hobby to begin its investigation into what went wrong. Now the NTSB and FAA will work to figure out how this was allowed to happen.
KHOU 11 News has reached out to the owners of both business planes. So far, we have not heard back.
Below is an animation of what happened.
Flights in and out of the airport were stopped around 3:30 p.m. and airport officials said Hobby was closed "until further notice."
Just after 7 p.m., the airport said flight operations had resumed.
An aviation expert said it could have been a major catastrophe.
"Luckily they didn't strike in the middle of each other because we'd be talking about a whole nother catastrophe," Oliver Brown said.
Brown is a former commercial pilot and aviation expert. He said that from the damage he could tell the impact was severe. He said he thinks the departing plane was going fast enough that aborting takeoff was impossible.
"It was a wing-to-rudder-type contact. It's going to be interesting if the pilots tried to abort or what elusive maneuvers they took," Brown said. "This is a very fortunate outcome. This is the most serious infraction that pilots can be involved in."
The airport was under a complete ground stop while FAA officials did their necessary checks after the incident.
As of 5 p.m., airport officials said 11 flights had been diverted and American Airlines had canceled four flights. Six flights were diverted to George Bush Intercontinental Airport.
A passenger told KHOU 11 News that his plane came to a stop on the runway and the pilot got on the intercom to tell them what happened.
"The pilot said there had been a collision between two business planes on the tarmac and there's currently debris on the runway," passenger Graham Sheldon said. "So, there's no flights landing or taking off."
Southwest Airlines said it suspended operations while the airport was closed. They asked anyone flying with them to check their flight status on the Southwest Airlines app and/or website.
Passengers flooded the terminals at the airport after the incident with nowhere to go.
"There's a lot of confusion around here. There's several hundred people milling about in the terminal," Sheldon said.
John Pethscheider was at Hobby to pick up his wife who had flown in from Phoenix.
"She told me they had been diverted to Intercontinental and that two small planes had collided," Pethscheider said. "That's all she said."
Editor's note: Hobby Airport initially said the two planes clipped wings. The FAA called it a collision. There was damage visible on the tail of one of the aircraft.