Small plane crashes in South Carolina, killing 3 people on board

CONWAY, SOUTH CAROLINA (BNO NEWS) -- A small plane crashed and burst into flames Saturday afternoon in a residential area in the U.S. state of South Carolina, killing all three people on board, local and federal officials said. The cause of the crash was not immediately known.

The accident occurred at about 1 p.m. local time when the twin-engine Beechcraft BE55 Baron aircraft went down in a residential subdivision of Conway, a city in Horry County near the Atlantic coast and about 140 miles (225 kilometers) southeast of Charlotte. There were a pilot and two passengers on board.

"The aircraft was attempting to return to the Conway-Horry County Airport shortly after departure when the accident occurred. The aircraft was destroyed," said Kathleen Bergen, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). She did not say why the aircraft was attempting to return to the airport, or whether the pilot had indicated a problem.

Horry County Deputy Coroner Darris Fowler confirmed all three people on board the aircraft were killed. He identified the victims as 39-year-old pilot James Major, 16-year-old passenger Donald Dale Decker and 42 or 43-year-old Kenneth Piuma. Major and Decker were both from Conway while Piuma was from Myrtle Beach.

The small aircraft did not hit any houses but took out a power pole before hitting the ground and bursting into flames. The crash caused around 200 people living in the immediate area to lose power, and it took until late Saturday evening before all power was restored as repair crews had to be extra careful not to disturb the crash site.

It was not immediately known what caused the crash, but both the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will investigate the cause of the accident.

(Copyright 2013 by BNO News B.V. All rights reserved. Info: [email protected].)