AKRON, OHIO, Nov. 10 (UPI) — Several people were killed in northern Ohio Tuesday afternoon after a small plane clipped some power lines and ignited a fire after it crashed into an apartment building, authorities said.
The Hawker H25 business jet had departed from Dayton early Tuesday afternoon and was due to land at Akron Fulton International Airport, officials said. Before it could land, though, it crashed in the residential neighborhood in foggy and rainy conditions.
Nine people were aboard, the plane’s owner said, and none are believed to have survived.
No one on the ground, however, was injured. The house that received the brunt of the crash was not occupied at the time, authorities said.
“Obviously, the situation could have been worse, granted, if anybody was home,” Ohio Highway Patrol Lt. William Haymaker said.
The Federal Aviation Administration, which confirmed the aircraft was a Hawker H25, said the plane went down at about 3 p.m. local time on its final approach to the Akron airport.
The plane clipped some power lines and ended up in the apartment building, officials said. An adjacent apartment building was also clipped as the plane went down, Akron Police Chief James Nice told WEWS-TV. The resulting fire burned for more than 90 minutes.
The plane’s owner, Augusto Lewkowicz, told the Akron Beacon Journal that the jet was on the second of a two-leg charter that began Monday. It was being operated by Execuflight, a Florida-based charter service.
Investigators are still trying to determine the cause of the crash, but Lewkowicz said it was almost certainly not a maintenance problem.
“It was a perfectly well-maintained aircraft with no squawks,” he said.
The National Transportation Safety Board, the U.S. civil aviation authority, will investigate the crash.
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