A small single-engine aircraft crashed Saturday morning near the Upper Cumberland Regional Airport in White County, Tennessee, claiming the lives of all three people on board, authorities said.
The Mooney M20TN, a high-performance, single-engine aircraft, had departed from Alabama and was approaching its destination when it went down south of the airport, according to a statement released by the Federal Aviation Administration. The crash occurred around 11:50 a.m., when initial reports of a downed aircraft reached the Upper Cumberland Regional Airport.
Dean Selby, the airport’s director, said that shortly after those reports, officials received a call from the Memphis Air Traffic Control Center indicating that communication and radar contact had been lost with an inbound aircraft. Emergency management teams, fire and rescue crews, and volunteers were dispatched to locate the wreckage. After an extensive ground search, the airport launched another plane to search from the air, eventually leading to the discovery of the crash site in what Selby described as a remote and difficult-to-access area.
Federal investigators from the FAA arrived at the scene within a few hours to begin an initial examination of the wreckage. The National Transportation Safety Board, which will lead the investigation, is expected to arrive on Sunday to conduct a more detailed probe into the cause of the accident. As of Saturday evening, the identities of the three victims had not been released, pending notification of their next of kin.
Sparta, where the airport is located, lies approximately 96 miles southeast of Nashville. The tragic incident adds to a troubling pattern of fatal small aircraft crashes across the United States in recent weeks. Last month, a plane crashed into a home in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, killing all aboard. In upstate New York, another small aircraft went down under similar circumstances shortly thereafter. Last Saturday, three people were killed when a plane plunged into a river in Nebraska, followed by another fatal crash on Sunday that left four dead in Illinois when a single-engine aircraft went down.
The series of deadly accidents has prompted renewed focus on small aircraft safety. Officials have not yet released any preliminary findings regarding what may have caused Saturday’s crash in Tennessee. The NTSB is expected to provide a preliminary report within days after their on-site examination, but full investigations typically take several months to complete.
