Several passengers were killed when a single-engine plane crashed and caught fire at the Wright Brothers National Memorial’s First Flight Airport in North Carolina on Saturday, officials said.
The crash happened around 5 p.m. in a wooded area of the airport, which is near the town of Kill Devil Hills, National Park Service (NPS) said in a press release.
“Eyewitnesses reported that the aircraft attempted to land at the airport,” according to the NPS. “After the crash, a fire broke out which caused the aircraft to burn.”
The Kill Devil Hills Fire Department and other local fire departments helped extinguish the fire after the plane crashed.
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Wright Brothers National Memorial seen from the air in Kitty Hawk, Kill Devils, North Carolina. (Visions of America/Joseph Sohm/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Nadia Popruzhenko told WVEC-TV that she was driving when she saw the plane going down.
“In the beginning I thought he was really high, and all of a sudden he went down a little too fast,” Popruzhenko said. “This one went down so fast I thought it was too low.”
It was unclear how many people were on board the plane at the time of the crash, although the NPS confirmed that “several passengers had been killed”.
The aviation history monument at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. (Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
The the airport is closed until further notice, the park service said, adding that the Wright Brothers National Memorial will be closed Sunday.
The National Transportation Safety Board investigating the crash. The Federal Aviation Administration has also been notified.
The Wright Flyer takes off for the first time in Kitty Hawk as Orville mans the controls and Wilbur runs alongside in 1903. (Wilbur and Orville Wright via National Park Service)
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The Wright Brothers National Memorial was built in the area where Wilbur and Orville Wright conducted “a series of experiments that three years later resulted in the world’s first heavier-than-air, powered controlled flight,” according to the NPS.