(Newswire.net — September 1, 2014) — The Piper PA-46 airplane crashed near the Erie Municipal Airport about 11:50 am, said Peter Knudson, a spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board.
Erie Police Cmdr. Lee Mathis said the six-passenger plane crashed a few hundred yards northwest of the runway, but he did not know if it was landing or taking off. A photo of the crash site posted on the Boulder Daily Camera’s website showed the mangled wreckage of the plane, which crashed into a grassy field.
KDVR and the Denver Post reported that three persons and a dog died in the crash. The identities of the victims are being withheld by authorities pending notification of next of kin. The Boulder Daily Camera reported that the six-passenger plane is registered to Boulder-based company, The Real Estate School LLC. The company is owned by real estate lawyer Oliver Frascona, who lives next to the airport.
An eyewitness, Jan Culver, told the newspaper she was with a friend in a pasture near the airport when she heard the plane and saw it flying “really, really low.”
“We heard it sputtering,” she said. “Then there was no sound. We knew it was a crash.”
She saw a small cloud of dust as the plane crashed and, because she has some medical knowledge, went to the scene to help, Culver said.
“It was a plane upside down with some folks already out of the plane,” she said. “I could tell there were some bad injuries.”
The Denver Post reported that NTSB records show the airport was the scene of three crashes in 2013 and two in 2012. None of those incidents had a fatality.
The last fatality at the airport was in May 2011, when 64-year-old Christian R. Hansen crashed on takeoff in a plane he was demonstrating for a potential buyer, according to the newspaper. The autopsy indicated Hansen had a heart attack.
Accident data has been collected for aviation in the United States since 1938.
Statistics concerning the total number and cause of accidents for aviation often lags behind by a number of years, because a professional team of regional or federal FAA investigators, carefully investigates all aviation accidents, which sometimes can take many years per single accident.
While the number and rates of general aviation are in a constant state of flux, the amount of general aviation exposure is and has been increasing for decades.