U.S. officials probing cause of Nashville plane crash that killed 5 Canadians

Global Affairs Canada says it’s aware of reports that five Canadians died in a Nashville plane crash earlier this week.

The federal department told Global News in an email on Tuesday that consular officials are in contact with local authorities, and are ready to provide consular assistance to families.

The five Canadians, three of whom were children, were on the single-engine plane that crashed alongside a highway west of downtown Nashville on Monday, U.S. National Transportation Safety Board Investigator Aaron McCarter said Tuesday.

McCarter said the agency is working with Ottawa to determine their identities. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada also said it has assigned a representative to the U.S.-led investigation.

The plane was a Piper PA-32R, made in 1978 and based in Ontario, where the flight originated, and made stops along the way that were likely to gas up, including in Erie, Pennsylvania, and Mount Sterling, Kentucky, McCarter said.

In radio transmission recordings, the pilot told air traffic controllers around 7:40 p.m. Monday that his engine had shut down. He said he had overflown John C. Tune airport, just west of downtown Nashville, at 2,500 feet and had circled around in an attempt to land.

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They cleared a runway at the airport, and urged him to glide the plane down. But the plane had already descended to 1,600 feet by then, he said.

“I’m too far away. I’m not going to make it,” he said.

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That was the last they heard from the plane, which dropped off radar as it lost altitude. Before the pilot radioed in the emergency, the plane had been on a normal flight track with no mechanical irregularities reported while it flew in from the Kentucky airport, McCarter added.

The plane crashed as Matthew Wiser was driving on the interstate.

“I saw an airplane essentially crash out of the sky, fall out of the sky, and hit the ground at around a 45-degree angle,” Wiser said in a phone interview with The Associated Press.

“When it hit the ground, there was a 30-to-40-foot explosion of fire. And all of the traffic on the interstate stopped and kind of processed what they saw.”

Air traffic controllers then directed a local helicopter crew to survey the approach to the airport in search of the plane, while keeping other aircraft out of the emergency area.

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Within minutes, a flood of emergency vehicles were speeding to the scene, Wiser said.

They discovered that the plane burst into flames in the grass, just off the highway and behind a Costco on the city’s westside, about five kilometres south of the general aviation airport.

Investigators do not yet know the cause, or why the pilot decided to circle the airport prior to the crash. McCarter mentioned that the plane’s approach was perpendicular to the interstate when it hit the ground.

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The NTSB will have a preliminary report out in about 10 days. The full report will take about nine months.

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— with files from The Canadian Press and The Associated Press

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