3 killed when small plane crashes in Maine

Portland, Maine — Police and federal authorities were investigating the crash of a small plane in rural Maine that killed three people on Monday after the aircraft departed from Canada.

The twin-engine plane was traveling from Pembroke, Ontario, to Prince Edward Island in Canada. The plane crashed on approach to Greenville Municipal Airport at about 11 a.m., a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration said. A cause for the crash was not immediately determined and was under investigation.

Police did not immediately release the names of those killed in the crash. The FAA was sending an investigator to the scene, they said. The FAA said there were three people on board the plane.

Local police said the FAA has indicated that the plane appeared to be having some kind of difficulty just before it crashed.

“The FAA will investigate and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will determine the probable cause for the accident,” said Jim Peters, an FAA spokesman.

The NTSB said it expected to release more information on the crash on Tuesday. A spokesman for the Greenville Police Department said the bodies had yet to be removed on Monday afternoon because of concerns about the safety of the crash site.

State police said they were assisting local police at the crash site, which was in a grassy field area outside the airport. The plane that crashed was an Aerostar AEST, which is a small propeller aircraft that transports small numbers of people.

Greenville is a town of about 1,600 people located about 150 miles north of Portland, in a rural part of the state's interior near Moosehead Lake.

The plane left from Pembroke Airport, which is about 90 miles northwest of Ottawa, near the provincial boundary of Ontario and Quebec. It was bound for Charlottetown Airport, which is on the island province of Prince Edward Island in Atlantic Canada.

Associated Press reporter Marina Villeneuve contributed to this story in Portland.