Two small planes collided in midair on Sunday morning at a Colorado airport, leaving one person dead and three others injured.
Officials with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the pilots of both planes were trying to land at Fort Morgan Municipal Airport when the crash occurred, 9 News reported.
There were two people onboard each of the planes — a Cessna 172 and an Extra Flugzeugbau EA300 — at the time. The Morgan County Sheriff’s Office said two people in the Cessna were treated for minor injuries, while one person in the Extra 300 died at the scene and the other was rushed to a hospital.
Images show the crash site with one of the aircraft lying upside down on charred grass:
Authorities with the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) plan to investigate what happened. For now, the airport is closed down and law enforcement officers are protecting the area until investigators arrive.
According to CNN, dispatch recordings of emergency crews revealed they saw “black smoke” and “active flames” at the crash site. One person was reportedly said to be “trapped in one of the planes,” the outlet stated.
Another image taken some distance away from the scene shows black smoke in the sky:
Aviation expert Greg Feith told News 9 there are still unanswered questions about what happened, stating, “They are rare events, but again, they do happen and we’ve had a number of them, unfortunately, in the last six to eight months across the country.”
“Fort Morgan is considered an uncontrolled airport. There is no control tower there, and so it’s incumbent upon pilots who are flying in and out of that airport to report their position over a common frequency,” Feith added. “That’s gonna be a key for investigators to see if in fact radio calls were made by both aircraft pilots.”
In a social media post after the crash, the sheriff’s office expressed sadness at the loss of life and thanked the agencies who helped law enforcement.
“Additionally, we want to thank the citizens who assisted in trying to extinguish the fire until the fire department and first responders arrived on the scene,” the post reads.
“This is an active investigation, and the names of the parties involved are not being released at this time. Further information will not be released at this time, due to the ongoing nature of the investigation,” the office noted.
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