Luz Cazares woke Tuesday morning to a loud crash and the sight of a plane's tail sticking out from the home of her neighbors, a couple in their 80s, just blocks from Midway Airport.



"A big part of the airplane was in their living room," said Cazares, 62. "I thought they were dead."



But then Cazares looked through a window and saw Raymond and Roberta Rolinskas standing in the hallway outside their bedroom, inches away from the wreckage.



"I ran to the back of the yard, I jumped the fence and I knocked on the back door of the kitchen," Cazares said. "She (Roberta) opened the door and I took her outside. She was scared. She kept asking, 'What is happening? What is happening?'"



Police officers went into the home and brought out her husband, and the couple were taken to the home of another neighbor, Jeanine Venckus. "Not a scratch on them, not a scratch," Venckus said. "They're shook up and bewildered."



The pilot of the twin-engine cargo plane was dead on the scene, but it took firefighters hours to shore up the home and recover the body of Eric Quentin Howlett, 47. "The floor of the living room collapsed into the basement," said Chicago fire Chief Michael Fox.



Howlett was the only person aboard when the plane crashed into the Rolinskases' home in the 6500 block of South Knox Avenue shortly after taking off from Midway around 2:45 a.m., aviation officials said.



He was still circling the airport when he radioed the air traffic tower that he had an emergency and was trying to make it to any of the three runways aligned southeast to northwest, an air traffic control source said. "The tower cleared him to land on any runway and then watched him go down as he was maneuvering," the source said.



The plane went down about a quarter of a mile from the airport, crashing through the front of the Rolinskases' home and coming to rest in the living room, its tail wedged against the roof of a neighboring house. The plane hit the right side and front of the house, 8 inches from where the couple were sleeping in a bedroom on the left side of the home, according to neighbors and fire officials.



"They were in a bedroom next to the living room, and the living room is gone," Fox told reporters. "Eight inches away. They were very lucky."



Venckus said she rushed over to help her neighbors after she heard a sputtering noise and then silence. "We looked out the window and there was a plane in the house across the street," she said. "They're elderly people. They're my parents' friends, and I had to make sure they got out.



"The firemen arrived when I got out there with my coat on, and they said you cannot go in there, and I said I have to. I have to check on them. And he said, 'We're bringing them out the back door,'" Venckus said.



Raymond Rolinskas told her he had "heard a boom and went to get up and couldn't walk into his front room or kitchen or anything, so they were quite bewildered," Venckus said. "The whole right side of the house is gone. Thank God their bedrooms were on the left."



The plane, an Aero Commander 500, had initially been headed for Chicago Executive Airport in Wheeling. But Howlett made a last-minute change to the flight plan before takeoff and listed the destination as the Ohio State University Airport in Columbus, near the suburb of Groveport where he lived, officials said.



Howlett was a commercial pilot who had a background working as a flight instructor and in information technology and marketing, according to his LinkedIn account. He was an Eagle Scout and served as an assistant scoutmaster.



"Eric was a good husband, a wonderful father and a hard worker who dedicated his life to his family and church,'' said Amy McMarrow, whose son is married to Howlett's daughter.



"He was just a good man who will be missed very much,'' McMarrow said.



Tim Sorensen, air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, would not say whether Howlett lost power in one or both of the plane's piston engines.



The Aero Commander, built in 1964, is capable of taking off, flying and landing on a single engine, according to Twin Commander Aircraft of Creedmoor, N.C., which is a parts and service provider for the airplane model.



In addition to the equipment on the plane, NTSB investigators are expected to focus on issues including the purity of the fuel that the plane took on at Midway, the impact of low temperatures on engine performance and the takeoff weight of the cargo plane. A full payload in combination with other factors could have affected the pilot's ability to return to the airport, an aviation source said.



The plane was operated by Central Airlines, based in Fairway, Kan. The company refused to answer questions about the accident.



A neighbor who lives down the block from the crash said she hadn't thought much about the dangers of living near Midway.



"It's crazy. It's right down the street," said Jocelyn Mejia, 24. "I didn't think anything like that would happen, even living by the airport."



Mejia said she was "already up, tossing and turning" when she heard the crash. "I kind of knew what it was and then, sure enough, like two minutes later I heard the firetrucks. I didn't feel shaking or anything, it was just a loud bang. It scared me.



"We were really lucky," she added. "Everyone here is really lucky."