Eleven skydivers and one pilot have been killed in a plane crash in the US state of Missouri, officials said.<\/p>\n
The airplane, which was leased by a skydiving company, took off around 11:20 local time on Sunday, according to a Bates County Emergency Management spokesperson.<\/p>\n
After failing to gain altitude, it made a sharp left turn and crashed about 200 yards away from Butler Memorial Airport, the spokesperson told the BBC. All 12 people on board died, he said.<\/p>\n
“We are treating that … as a mass casualty,” Bates County Sheriff Chad Anderson said during an afternoon news conference.<\/p>\n
The sheriff said the plane was not a commercial airliner, and rather “a local airplane that took off from our local airport.”<\/p>\n
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the plane was a Pacific Aerospace P750 and crashed while departing the airport.<\/p>\n
“Air traffic services were not being provided at the time,” the FAA said. A spokesperson explained that the plane was not required to be in communication due to the type of air space it was flying in.<\/p>\n
Local media reported that first responders checked the area to see if any of the skydivers had jumped from the plane before the crash.<\/p>\n
Some family members of the deceased witnessed the incident, the sheriff said.<\/p>\n
Authorities have not shared information on the identities of the victims.<\/p>\n
The city of Butler is about 50 miles south of the Kansas City metropolitan area.<\/p>\n
The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is leading the investigation into the crash, the FAA said.<\/p>\n
The BBC has contacted the NTSB. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Eleven skydivers and one pilot have been killed in a plane crash in the US state of Missouri,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":638788,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-638787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638787\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}