A single-engine plane crashed and burst into flames Saturday at North Carolina's Wright Brothers National Memorial First Flight Airport, killing multiple passengers, officials said.
The crash occurred in a wooded area of the airport near the town of Kill Devil Hills at 5 p.m., the National Park Service (NPS) said in a news release.
“Witnesses reported the plane was attempting to land at the airport,” the NPS said. “After the crash, a fire broke out and the plane was on fire.''
After the plane crash, the Kill Devil Hills Fire Department and other local fire departments assisted in putting out the fire.
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Aerial view of the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kitty Hawk, Kill Devils, North Carolina. (Visions of America/Joseph Sohm/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
Nadia Poplzhenko told WVEC-TV She was driving when she saw the plane descending.
“At first I thought he was very high, and then all of a sudden he went down a little too quickly,” Poplzhenko said. “This went down so quickly that I thought maybe it was too low.”
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It is unclear how many people were on the plane at the time of the crash, but the NPS confirmed that “multiple passengers were killed.”
Aviation History Monument at Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. (Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
The Park Service added that the airport will be closed until further notice and the Wright Brothers National Memorial will also be closed Sunday.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the accident. The US Federal Aviation Administration has also been notified.
In 1903, the first Wright Flyer took off at Kitty Hawk, with Orville at the controls and Wilbur alongside. (Wilbur and Orville Wright, via National Park Service)
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The Wright Brothers National Memorial was built on the site where Wilbur and Orville Wright conducted “a series of experiments that three years later would lead to the world's first heavier-than-air powered controlled flight,” according to the NPS.
