Well, fortunately, the elder Bush hadn't gotten on this plane yet. Anyways, it crashed before it landed to pick up the elder Bush. The plane was owned by a company out of Tulsa! Hmmm....not good news for Tulsa!

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Jet to Pick Up Elder Bush Was Warned

Tue Nov 23, 6:10 PM ET U.S. National - AP


By JUAN A. LOZANO, Associated Press Writer

HOUSTON - The pilot of a private jet was warned the plane was flying low minutes before it crashed en route to a scheduled landing in Houston to pick up former President Bush (news - web sites), a federal investigator said Tuesday.

Jet Crashes Before Picking Up Elder Bush

An investigation is under way to find out what caused the Gulfstream G-1159A jet to go down Monday morning, killing a crew of three. The plane, which belonged to Jet Place Inc. of Tulsa, Okla., left Dallas an hour earlier and was to have picked up Bush, who lives in Houston, for a trip to Ecuador to give a speech at a business conference.

Mark Rosenker, vice chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board (news - web sites), said the control tower at Hobby Airport told crew members about three minutes before landing that winds were calm and their runway was clear.

"The controller talked with the aircraft approximately two minutes before the accident and asked them to check their altitude because they saw them at somewhere approximately 400 feet," said Rosenker.
It was not immediately known if the crew responded, NTSB (news - web sites) officials said.
The jet's wing and the landing gear on the right side clipped a 120-foot tall light pole on a road about 3 1/4 miles south of the runway. The normal altitude for a jet at that point would have been 1,000 feet.

Rosenker said there are alarms aboard a plane that tell a pilot if he is flying too low, but it was not immediately known if they were activated.

Various factors, including the condition of the aircraft, the weather and the history of the flight crew, are being examined. Rosenker said the pilot and crew were "seasoned," each having 19,000 hours of flying experience.

The investigation could take up to a year to complete. "