Federal investigators are examining whether strong winds or other factors may have contributed to a small plane crash that killed two people after the aircraft struck a home and exploded in Akron, Ohio, during a training flight, officials said Friday.
Akron police received calls about the crash at around 4 p.m. on Thursday. Both victims were on the Piper PA-28 aircraft when it struck the house.
At a press conference Friday, Aaron McCarter, an aviation accident investigator with the NTSB, confirmed the flight was a training exercise. One of the individuals aboard was a certified flight instructor; the other was the pilot and owner of the aircraft.
The two departed Akron Fulton Airport at around 2:00 p.m. and flew roughly 40 miles south. At 2,500 feet, following standard flight-training maneuvers, they attempted to land. The first attempt ended in a go-around; the second resulted in the aircraft overflying the runway.
“During that time, something upset the aircraft,” McCarter said. “The aircraft was seen by credible witnesses and doorbell cameras spiraling out of the sky from about 1,000 feet, where it impacted the road behind me and subsequently struck the house,” he added.
Investigators are not ruling out weather or any other contributing factors. “The winds were pretty significant, gusting up to 25 knots,” McCarter said. “That’s something that we’re looking into, and they’re going to provide a weather study for us to correlate all that information.”
Video shared with NBC News shows the house engulfed in flames, the fire spreading rapidly and sending plumes of smoke rising 50 feet or more into the air. The wail of fire trucks can be heard as passersby stopped to record the scene.
Three people — a father and two children — were inside the home at the time. All escaped unharmed.
The wreckage will be removed from the home and transported to an airport for further examination. McCarter said there is “no eureka moment so far” as to the cause of the crash.