Audio recordings captured a pilot telling an air traffic controller, "I’m going to be landing, I don’t know where," in the moments before his small plane crashed alongside Interstate-40 in Nashville, killing him, another adult and three children.
The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are now investigating what caused the aircraft – referred to in radio recordings as a Piper PA-32R – to plunge out of the sky on Monday night.
Metro Nashville Police spokesperson Don Aaron said the control tower at John C. Tune Airport received a message at about 7:40 p.m. from an aircraft reporting that it was experiencing engine and power failure and needed emergency approval to land.
"Nashville, I’m declaring an emergency. My engine shut down," the pilot could be heard saying in an audio recording obtained by WYMT.
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"Are you trying to land at John Tune?" the air traffic controller says.
"My engine turned off. I’m at 1,600. I’m going to be landing, I don’t know where," the pilot responded.
In the recordings, the pilot also said he had the runway of the airport in sight, but declared, "I’m too far away, I won’t make it."
The single-engine plane ultimately crashed near I-40 East at Mile Marker 203 in West Nashville, a neighborhood about three miles from the airport.
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The pilot had another adult and three children on board, National Transportation Safety Board investigator Aaron McCarter said at a Tuesday news conference. He said the five were Canadian citizens and the agency is working with the Canadian government to determine their identities.
The flight originated in Ontario and made stops along the way that were likely to gas up, including in Erie, Pennsylvania, and Mount Sterling, Kentucky, McCarter said. 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.
"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," witness Matthew Wiser told 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."
Fox News’ Landon Mion and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
