Ten people have died after a small plane crashed into a hangar shortly after taking off and burst into flames.
The disaster took place at a small airfield in the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, on Sunday morning.
The two crew and eight passengers who perished in the crash have not yet been identified.
No one else was hurt on the ground, although the hangar and other aircraft inside it were damaged in the fire.
“We don’t know a lot about the people on board at this point,” the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) vice chairman Bruce Landsberg said.
He also said it was too early to say if reports the aircraft appeared to suffer an engine failure as it took off were accurate.
“We cannot confirm that there was an engine failure at this point. There are any number of possibilities that could occur,” he said.
The Beechcraft BE-350 King Air plane was scheduled to fly from Addison Municipal Airport, about 20 miles north of Dallas, to St Petersburg, Florida.
But almost as soon as it took off it began to lose altitude, veered to one side and then plunged into a hangar at the airfield.
Although it quickly caught on fire, firefighters at the airport were quickly on the scene and were able to put out the conflagration quickly.
Videos taken of the disaster show a plume of black smoke billowing into the sky above the smouldering hangar.
Members of the NTSB’s investigation team have already arrived in Addison and begun assessing what could have caused the crash. A preliminary report on the accident is expected within two weeks.
