A mother and her two young children were killed on Monday when an Embraer Phenom 100 crashed into their house about a mile short of Montgomery County Airpark in Gaithersburg, Maryland, just before 11 a.m. local time.
Three people on board the jet were also killed, according to the National Transportation Safety Board, including the pilot, Dr. Michael Rosenberg, CEO of Durham, North Carolina-based Health Decisions. The two others on board were company employees.
NTSB board member Robert Sumwalt said during a press conference that the Phenom struck three houses, cutting a narrow gash through the roof of the first house before the main fuselage and tail section came to rest against a second house. One wing appeared to have been “catapulted” into the third house, he said, which caught on fire. The three victims in that house — the mother and her toddler-aged sons — were found in an upstairs bathroom.
Sumwalt said the Phenom’s flight data recorder was recovered and taken to NTSB headquarters in Washington for download. Communications between the pilot and ATC were normal. Rosenberg last reported on Unicom being on a 3 mile final to the uncontrolled airport. The next transmission was from another pilot who the saw the crash scene.
Notably, this was the pilot’s second crash at the Gaithersburg airport. In March 2010 he was unhurt when he crashed on airport property in a Socata TBM 700 after drifting left of the runway in the flare and attempting a go-around. The NTSB blamed that accident on the pilot’s failure to maintain control during the botched maneuver.
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