A man who was part-owner of a plane that crashed Monday in Texas, killing all six people aboard, said he and his friend who owned the plane regularly volunteered to fly sick people in remote parts of the country to hospitals in Houston and Dallas.
Officials have not yet released the identities of the six aboard the aircraft when it crashed into the rocky hills of a central Texas ranch, according to authorities, while preparing to land. Charles Morina of Dallas told The Associated Press that he did not know if his partner was among those aboard, nor did he know what caused the crash.
WATCH: Plane crash on private ranch in Texas kills 6
The twin-engine aircraft went down just before 9 a.m. as it approached an airport in Kerrville, a city about 70 miles (110 kilometres) northwest of San Antonio, according to Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Lynn Lunsford.
The pilot and the five other people aboard the plane were all killed, said Sgt. Orlando Moreno, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety. State law enforcement officials secured the crash site ahead of FAA and National Transportation Safety Board investigators’ arrival Monday.
The Beechcraft BE58 took off from an airport outside Houston earlier Monday and crashed about 6 miles (10 kilometres) northwest of Kerrville Municipal Airport, Lunsford said. The flight was not a scheduled commercial route, he said.
The downed plane was a manufactured by Raytheon Aircraft in 1999 and was co-owned by two people, according to FAA records.
The cause of the crash hasn’t been determined. There was a low layer of broken clouds but no rain in the area around the airport at the time of the crash, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Cory Van Pelt.