Last Saturday afternoon a small plane crashed on its approach to an airport runway in Westchester County, the authorities said.The plane, a single-engine Cessna 210, took off from Westchester County Airport in Armonk, N.Y., just before 1 p.m. and was headed to Montauk on the eastern end of Long Island when the pilot decided to turn around, said Holly Baker, a spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
She said the pilot contacted an emergency control tower “shortly after takeoff” and said that he had to return. He then made a descent toward the airport but hit the ground too early.
“While he was returning and trying to land, the plane went down short of the runway,” Ms. Baker said. “The plane was burned.”
All four people aboard the plane were killed. Their names were not immediately released.
The plane was based at Panorama Flight Service, in White Plains, an airport spokesman, Steve Ferguson, said in a statement obtained by The Associated Press.
The company, which markets flight training, rentals and maintenance service at the airport, served mainly as a garage for the plane when it was not flying, the company’s president, Gene Condreras, told The A.P.
The cause of the crash, and the reason the pilot circled back to the airport, were not immediately known Saturday night. But investigators with the National Transportation Safety Board were set to visit the scene of the crash Sunday, Ms. Baker said.
