Five people dead after small airplane crashes in Hill Country

Five people are dead after a small airplane crashed in Hays County on Thursday night, Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra said. The crash happened shortly after 11 p.m. near Wimberley, a town of 3,000 people about 15 miles west of San Marcos. The crashed occurred near the 200 block of Round Rock Road in a wooded area on the southwest side of town. Becerra said the names of the crash victims were not being released until their next of kin has been notified. The Texas Department of Public Safety said the crash victims were the pilot and four passengers. DPS officials also declined to release the victims' names. The airplane that crashed was a Cessna 421C, Becerra said, with the tail number N291AN. The plane was traveling from River Falls Airport, a small private field near Amarillo, to New Braunfels Regional Airport, according to data from the flight tracking site Flightaware.com. The Cessna 421C is a twin-engine plane that typically seats six passengers. The plane is owned by KB Flies LLC, an entity that is based in Amarillo, according to Federal Aviation Administration registration data. Its “airworthiness date,” or the date the FAA granted authorization to operate the craft in flight, is listed as January 1977. The plane made frequent flights from Amarillo to other Texas cities, according to data from Flightaware.com. Becerra said it appears the plane "was traveling at a high rate of speed at the time of impact," but said there is no indication of a mid-air collision. Another plane took off from River Falls Airport headed to New Braunfels National Airport within two minutes of the plane that crashed, according to tracking date from Flightaware.com. That plane, also a Cessna 421, landed safely in New Braunfels, according to Flightaware.com data. That plane is owned by Robert Delorenz of Boca Raton, Florida, according to FAA registration data. It was unclear if the planes were traveling together. Peter Knudson, a spokesperson for the National Transportation Safety Board, said the plane caught fire after the crash. An NTSB investigator was traveling to the accident site, Knudson said. "After the wreckage is documented at the crash location, it will be moved to a secure facility for further evaluation," he said in a written statement. A preliminary report on the crash is expected within 30 days. A final report is expected in one to two years. The plane took off from River Falls Airport, which is about 10 miles southeast of Amarillo, at 9:11 p.m. on Thursday. It was scheduled to land at New Braunfels National Airport at 11:19 p.m. Heading southwest toward Wimberley, it took a sharp turn to head northwest near Ledgerock Road in unincorporated Hays County, about 5 miles northwest of Wimberley, according to Flightaware.com's tracking data. When it made the turn, it plunged from an altitude of 13,600 feet to about 7,000 feet before it stopped transmitting data, according to Flightaware.com's tracking data. There were thunderstorms in the area near the time the plane went down, but it wasn’t immediately clear if weather played a role in the crash. This is the second fatal plane crash in the Hill Country in the past four months. On Dec.31, a Lancair Legacy crashed Fredericksburg, killing the only person on board, Gillespie County resident Richard Randy Bills, 72.