A small plane that was loaded with hurricane relief supplies headed to Jamaica wasn’t weighed before it crashed in a Coral Springs neighborhood last month, killing a father and daughter, according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board.
The report released Wednesday reveals new details on the Nov. 10 crash that killed the pilot, 53-year-old Alexander Wurm, and his 22-year-old daughter, Serena.
The crash happened just before 10:20 a.m. in the Windsor Bay community near the 5000 block of Northwest 57th Way, just west of State Road 7 and south of the Sawgrass Expressway.
Surveillance video from a nearby home showed the plane narrowly miss a house as it clipped some trees and took out part of a backyard fence before it crashed into a lake, sending water into the air and creating waves.
Wurm was the founder of Ignite the Fire Ministry, and was making repeated trips to Jamaica with supplies to help the island recover from Hurricane Melissa.
According to the NTSB report, the plane, a Beech King Air B100, was making a round-trip flight from Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport to Montego Bay, Jamaica.
A local church group arrived at the airport with supplies and had been told in advance by the pilot that he could take about 1,000 pounds of cargo, but when they arrived he had already loaded about 200 pounds worth of equipment into the plane, the report said.
The group started passing cargo in through the plane’s rear door as Wurm arranged it in the cabin, placing it on seats and footwells, the report said.
The cargo wasn’t weighed but Wurm checked the weight documented on each box as it was loaded, the report said.
A generator was loaded in the aft baggage compartment of the plane and secured to the airframe with webbing but the report said other cargo wasn’t secured.
CORAL SPRINGS PLANE CRASH
“Review of a photo taken after completion showed that the center aisle of the cabin was clear and that the cargo was loaded unsecured throughout the cabin on passenger seats,” the report noted.
The plane was also filled to capacity with 282 gallons of jet fuel, the report said.
There was cargo left over but it was determined it would be taken on another flight.
After takeoff the plane started to descend, and the controller told the pilot to turn but got no response, the report said.
According to the report, heavy breathing and “grunting” sounds were heard before the plane went down, killing the father and daughter.
The report mentions the surveillance videos of the final seconds of the flight and notes that it “was not trailing smoke or vapors in any of the recordings, all of which captured the sound of engines operating.”
It also said the plane entered a band of clouds associated with a cold front after takeoff and remained in the clouds until it began to descend.
The report noted that Wurm had bought the plane in February 2024 and it underwent a “complete interior furnishings and avionics suite upgrade.”
The exact cause of the crash is still being investigated.
