Four people died on Thursday morning in Wichita, after a small plane crashed right into a building close to the Wichita Mid-Continental Airport in southern Kansas. Fire Marshal Brad Crisp said that there were five other injured people, as well as four people unaccounted for. Fire Chief Ron Blackwell declared the following: “Firefighters engaged in a horrific fight for several minutes. We have the fire under control. We are in the process of trying to determine if all the employees and visitors who may have been in the building are accounted for”.
Three of the injured people are said to be in critical condition. The other injured individual seems to be in good condition, according to an official statement from the Via Cristi Health Hospital in Wichita. Both FAA investigators and National Transportation Safety Board personnel, from Wichita were present at the scene of the incident. Steve Phillips, a Flight Safety International spokesman declared: “There is a small aircraft that went into the Flight Safety building near Wichita Mid-Continent Airport”. The small plane involved in the crash was a Hawker Beechcraft King Air. Phillips said it crashed into the rooftop of their training center. He added: “I have no information on how many people were on board. […] We have the manager of the training center on site, and he’s making sure everyone is OK, but I don’t have an answer for that”. The Flight Safety building in across the street from the Wichita Mid-Continental Airport. At the time of the crash, more than one hundred people were inside the Flight Safety building. According to the FAA, the twin engine plane lost one of its engines during takeoff. Soon afterwards, it crashed into a two-story building. The eastern part of the roof was completely destroyed.
Video footage from the scene of the plane crash showed smoke coming from the building, at approximately 10.20 a.m on Thursday. According to a statement released by the Wichita Mid-Continental Airport, flights continued to operate normally. However, some of the roads close to the airport were closed off for a few hours. The Wichita Mid-Continental Airport statement also said: “The building has sustained serious damage, including the collapse of walls and ceilings”.