A plane approaching New Haven airport for a landing crashed into a Connecticut home today, leaving the pilot and his 17-year old son dead and two children who were inside the home feared dead.
Bill Henningsgaard and his son Maxwell were reportedly touring colleges on a trip from Oregon when something went terribly wrong in the plane. Henningsgaard reportedly approached the airport once to land but passed it up, though officials aren’t sure why. Witnesses say they heard the engine of the plane completely die moments before it crashed.
“All we know is that it missed the approach and continued on. There were no distress calls as far as we know,” said Lori Hoffman-Soares, a spokesperson for Tweed New Haven Airport.
The owner of the home the plane crashed into–who hasn’t been identified yet–ran screaming into the street after the crash, saying her two children were trapped inside. Several witnesses rushed in to try and help, but were forced out by the thick smoke. Authorities haven’t recovered their bodies yet but are afraid the 1-year old and 13-year old are dead.
Bill Henningsgaard, according to his brother, was an experienced pilot. Today, several families are grieving their loss and looking for answers that will likely not come for a while. Officials say the home is too unstable to continue their investigation into the back of the house, where the kids were.
As of now, the investigation has yielded two bodies, but authorities say there is a possibility that a third person was on the plane with the Henningsgaards.
A spate of plane crashes this year have puzzled authorities in several states; in May, a small aircraft crashed into an apartment building in Virginia, and last month a plane took out homes in a trailer park in Maryland. Also in July, the Asiana flight crashed upon landing at San Francisco Airport, killing two, and a day later a plane crashed at an Alaska airport, killing everyone on board.