A pilot has been killed after a plane crashed shortly after taking off from Mesquite Airport in Texas, leaving a huge plume of smoke coming from the aircraft.
The Cessna Citation jet took off at about 7:40am local time with a single pilot on board, according to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). Witnesses said they saw two explosions, and that the aeroplane appeared to have crashed in a woodland near a creek.
Emergency services arrived on the scene to find burning wreckage among the trees. The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board are due to investigate the incident. Officials are yet to provide any information on the cause of the crash, and the pilot’s name has not been released.
No homes or buildings were damaged in the crash, police said. People living near the site on Thursday described a harsh burning smell. One local woman who was dropping told FOX 4: “It was not like a regular smell like when a house is burning or when you turn on your chimney and stuff. It was a different smell.”
On Sunday, a mass casualty incident was declared in Pennsylvania after a light aircraft crashed into a retirement home. The Federal Aviation Administration later confirmed five people were on the plane, which was a six-seater Beechcraft, when it crashed into the Brethren Village Retirement Community while en route to Springfield, Ohio. Several people were injured in the crash.
A number of deadly plane crashes in the US over recent weeks have sparked renewed concerns over air traffic control and plane safety among Americans – though officials have repeatedly highlighted that air travel is a safe and highly reliable form of transport. US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has said he believes that pilot error has been to blame to a majority of the recent accidents. This included a horror collision between a passenger plane and a military helicopter in January that killed 67 people, and the death of 10 people on board the Bering Air Flight 445, which crashed in Alaska just over a week later.
On Monday, US president Donald Trump denied that cuts by federal government and widespread staffing issues in air control may have contributed to the uptick in crashes, telling reporters in the White House that he believed it was instead down to random chance. He said: “It’s just they have spates like this, you know, they have times when things happen a little bit more often than normal, and then it goes back, and you go many years without having a problem.”
