BATON ROUGE - From looking at the smoldering remains of the plane, it's hard to believe anyone walked away.

"Had you not told me that there were survivors before, I probably would have said it was very unlikely that there would have been survivors," said Angel Hawk, a former flight-attendant and employee at Gulf Coast Aviation.

Just the tail left in tact, but incredibly all 21 people on board made it off with only some minor injuries reported.

"We're thankful that all of the passengers and crew members were able to extract themselves, and that's when the first responders were able to go to work to extinguish the fire," said Sgt. Stephen Woodard with the Texas Department of Public Safety.

Hawk said it's likely the sole attendant on board got everyone off the plane safely.

"I think there's a very good chance that they did, yeah. These are weeks and weeks they spend learning how to evacuate an airplane."

According to reports, the large privately owned passenger plane aborted take off from Houston Executive Airport around 10 a.m..

"The majority of what they teach us in training, the majority of emergencies happen during take-off and landing," Hawk said.

Though it's not clear yet what caused the take-off failure, most of the damage happened when the plane went through a fence and caught fire.

"That type of aircraft is very heavy, so the impact can cause a fire, any impact with the engines can cause a fire, and once that happens it's hard to control."

The plane, an MD-87, can hold up to 130 people. They began flying in the 80s, though information on how old this specific plane was had been hidden to the public by the owner.

"A lot of airlines have retired them, just because they're moving toward one brand of aircraft or another," Hawk explained.

This plane, retired from commercial flight, was on a chartered trip taking 18 private passengers to the ALCS in Boston.