MT. COMFORT — Two people were killed on impact when their small jet crashed Wednesday afternoon into a remote farm field just east of Indianapolis Regional Airport.
The plane had just made a refueling stop at the airport and took off around 12:40 p.m. Names of the victims — the pilot and one passenger — were not released. Nor was the plane’s itinerary. Ryan Maxfield, general manager for IndyJet, the airport’s fixed-based operator, said the plane was a Cessna Citation 550, a small, two-engine corporate jet. Maxfield said an employee on a runway ramp saw the plane crash.
The aircraft went down in a muddy farm field just east of the airport, near the intersection of County Roads 400W and 500N. Lowell Thomas, owner of Kingen Gun Club at 5112 W. County Road 500N, less than a mile away from the site, said he spoke with a club member who was outside around the time of the crash. Thomas said the club member reported seeing fire and smoke but did not hear or see a plane and figured it was a farmer burning brush in the sparsely populated area.
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Click here to purchase photos from this galleryFirst-responders had to use four-wheel ATVs to get to the site because vehicles quickly bogged down trying to reach it. When rescuers did reach the wreckage, on foot, they confirmed the worst.
“Any time you’re dealing with a plane crash, of course you expect the worse, and this one is,” Sgt. John Perrine of the Indiana State Police said. “It’s a fatal crash and that’s tragic and that will resonate throughout this community regardless of where (the victims) were from.”
Officials would not say if the occupants of the plane were male or female, and they would not speculate on a cause.
Officials from the Federal Aviation Administration took control of the accident scene shortly after 3 p.m. Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board from Chicago were expected to be at the site by 7 p.m. Wednesday will be back in the field again today to continue their work. Local officers remained on scene to secure the area for the federal authorities, Perrine said.
Officials from the Hancock County 911 Center started receiving calls about the crash around 12:43 p.m. and dispatched first-responders, said Greg Duda, public information officer for the 911 center.
Further information on the crash is expected to come from the federal agencies, Perrine said.
The Cessna Citation 550 is known as a corporate aircraft. The oldest models have been flying since the late 1970s. Depending on the configuration, the Citation has a capacity of 7 to 10 seats.
