Officials say five persons were killed when a tiny plane crashed after taking off from an airfield in the US state of Arkansas.
Officials say no one survived the collision near Little Rock’s William and Hillary Clinton National Airport.
The flight, a twin-engined Beechcraft, was heading for Columbus, Ohio.
According to the company, everyone on board, including the pilot, worked for CTEH, a Little Rock-based consulting firm.
An environmental consultancy firm’s staff were on their way to investigate an explosion at an Ohio metal mill that killed one person and injured at least 13, according to a company representative.
The jet crashed around lunchtime on Wednesday near a rugged wooded region near a factory owned by adhesive tape maker 3M, only a few kilometers from the airport, according to police.
Wind gusts of 46mph (74km/h) were recorded near the airport around the time of the incident, according to local forecasters.
According to Lieutenant Cody Burk, a spokeswoman for the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office, “the weather was not so ideal at the time,” but it has not been proven whether those conditions contributed to the incident.
The weather has delayed the probe, which was still in the “recovery phase,” he said.
The crash will be investigated by the federal National Transportation Safety Board.
