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An airplane with two people on board bound for a small airport east of Charlotte crashed through trees and caught fire Thursday morning in South Carolina, officials said.
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The pilot reported engine failure before the crash before 1 a.m., the Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.
“Efforts to divert the plane for a safe landing were apparently unsuccessful, and the plane went down,” the statement said.
Sheriff’s office spokesman Doug Barfield told The Herald federal officials will handle the investigation into why the plane crashed.
The crash site is east of Rock Hill and south of Charlotte.
The crash happened off Brooklyn Avenue just outside the Lancaster city limits in a wooded area, according to Barfield and Greg Nicholson of Lancaster County Emergency Management.
The plane ended up on a hillside behind Zero Waste Recycling close to Springdale Road, Barfield said.
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The two people aboard, who are both believed to be pilots, were taken to burn centers, according to the Lancaster sheriff.
The names of the two people hurt have not been released.
The Federal Aviation Administration told The Herald the plane is a Beechcraft BE55 that took off from the Poplarville-Pearl River County Airport in Mississippi and was headed to the Stanly County Airport in Albemarle, N.C. Albemarle is east of Charlotte and north of the crash site.
The plane is owned by Pressley Aviation in North Carolina, Barfield said. Pressley Aviation’s website says it is a flight school located at the airport in Stanly County, N.C.
Calls and emails to Pressley Aviation Thursday morning were not immediately returned.
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Check back for updates on this story.