WELLS, Texas (AP) — Investigators will examine the charred wreckage of a twin-engine plane that crashed in an East Texas field while flying from Houston to Oklahoma.
The Federal Aviation Administration says nobody on board apparently survived. FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford said Tuesday that the wreckage is badly burned and officials aren't sure how many people the Cessna 421 carried.
Searchers located the wreckage Monday night near Wells, about 140 miles northeast of Houston.
The FAA says the plane was en route from West Houston Airport to Tulsa Riverside Airport when controllers lost contact with the aircraft around 9:30 p.m. Monday. Officials believe the pilot was trying to avoid bad weather near Cherokee County when the plane went off radar.
Further details on the plane's owner were not immediately available.
Below is the text of an email sent to KWGS News from FAA Spokesman Lynn Lundsford:
This information is preliminary and subject to change:
Just before 9:30 p.m. local time, air traffic controllers lost radar and radio contact with a twin-engine Cessna 421 that was en route from West Houston Airport to Tulsa Riverside Airport in Oklahoma.
The aircraft had been maneuvering to avoid weather in the vicinity of Cherokee County in East Texas at the time it disappeared from radar.
Local search and rescue crews located the wreckage of an aircraft late Monday evening in a field outside Wells, Texas, with no apparent survivors. We do not know how many people were on the aircraft.
Federal Aviation Administration investigators were en route to confirm the tail number of the aircraft. The FAA will be a part of a team led by the National Transportation Safety Board, which is in charge of all fatal aircraft accident investigations. That team is expected to begin its work sometime Tuesday morning.