Multiple people are reported to have died in a plane crash while the aircraft was landing at a regional airport in North Carolina, officials say.<\/p>\n
Six people were aboard the Cessna C550 aircraft when it crashed at Statesville Regional Airport around 10:20 local time (15:20GMT), aviation officials investigating the incident told reporters.<\/p>\n
Iredell County Sheriff Darren Campbell confirmed to The Associated Press that there were fatalities, but declined to say how many.<\/p>\n
Registration information for the plane suggests it is owned by a private company affiliated with Greg Biffle, a retired Nascar driver, WBTV, a CBS affiliate reported. <\/p>\n
Statesville Airport director John Ferguson described the aircraft as a corporate jet and said that it was already engulfed in flames when he arrived on the scene.<\/p>\n
The business jet took off around 10:06 local time and was in the air briefly before the crash.<\/p>\n
It crashed on the east end of the runway and authorities do not yet have information on the cause of the crash.<\/p>\n
Statesville Airport will remain closed until further notice as crews clear debris off the runway, Mr Ferguson told reporters.<\/p>\n
Officials did not provide any information about deaths or people aboard the aircraft during the media conference.<\/p>\n
The National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the investigation, said it was launching a go team to investigate the fatal crash. The team expects to arrive on scene on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
The Statesville Regional Airport (KSVH) is owned by the City of Statesville, which is about 45 minutes north of Charlotte. <\/p>\n
It also provides aviation facilities for Fortune 500 companies and several Nascar racing teams. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Multiple people are reported to have died in a plane crash while the aircraft was landing at a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-356573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}