Two die in small plane crash at Santa Fe airport
City officials said the occupants were practicing landing
The pilot and passenger in a small, single-engine plane died following a Monday afternoon crash at Santa Fe Regional Airport, New Mexico State Police said. City officials said occupants of the aircraft, whose identities were not immediately made public, were practicing landing techniques when the plane crashed and burned on airport property shortly after 3:30 p.m.
“They were practicing, doing touch-and-goes,” airport manager Mark Baca said in
a phone interview. “They were practicing landing. You come in, touch down and take off.”
The two-seater aircraft was destroyed by fire, an Federal Aviation Administration spokesman said.
Santa Fe Fire Department assistant Chief Carlos Nava told The New Mexican that members of a crash rescue unit stationed at the airport responded to the incident, which occurred on a secondary runway just south of a National Guard complex.
Baca said officials from the FAA’s Flight Standards District Office in Albuquerque were at the scene on Monday and that officials with the National Transportation Safety Board, which has taken over the investigation, will be at the airport on Tuesday.
State police initially said on social media that the pilot was the only occupant of the aircraft. Spokesman Mark Soriano later said two people died.
Chuck Grosvenor, an instructor with Sierra Aviation, a business based at Santa Fe airport that has a fleet of aircraft available for training and rental, said the leased aircraft was a Sierra Tecnam.
However, he said he could not discuss any further details. “We’ve been instructed by state police not to talk while this is investigated.”
Monday’s fatal crash is the second at the airport in the past five months. In late November, Larry Nelson, 73, of Wheat Ridge, Colo., crashed just short of the runway while on a trip from Arizona to Akron, Colo. Family members believe he was making an emergency diversion to the Santa Fe airport.