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One person died after a plane used for skydiving crashed in Niagara County, New York, on Saturday, CNN reported. Following the incident, New York authorities launched an investigation on Saturday.
The single-engine Cessna 208B, a plane used for skydiving, crashed near Lake Road near Youngstown, New York, shortly before 1 p.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.
The plane from the Skydive the Falls skydiving center cleared all divers and was returning to land when it crashed, according to a press release from the Niagara County Sheriff’s Office on Saturday, as reported by CNN.
An FAA spokeswoman, Tammy L. Jones, said the pilot, who was the only person on board, was conducting parachute operations before the accident.
However, it remains unclear how many divers were on board before the accident, Niagara County Sheriff Michael Filicetti said at a news conference Saturday.
Later, a forest fire also broke out around the crash site, according to the statement.
The initial response team had to put out “a significant fire at that time,” Filicetti said.
The sheriff called the plane crash “an unfortunate incident” and added that local and federal law enforcement partners are working to determine what led to the crash.
“Well, I guess this is just like any other emergency incident… You get here and you want to try to preserve life. Unfortunately, in this case, we couldn’t do that,” Filicetti said.
An investigator from the National Transportation Safety Board is expected to travel to the crash site on Saturday, NTSB spokesman Peter Knudson told CNN.
The investigator will further document the plane wreckage, which will then be transferred to a secure facility for further evaluation, Knudson said.
The investigation will involve three main areas, including the pilot, the aircraft and the operating environment, CNN reported.
(Except the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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