Plane crashes at Wichita airport, killing 4

WICHITA, Kan. -- A small plane lost power after takeoff and crashed into a flight-training building while trying to return to a Kansas airport Thursday, killing at least four people, injuring at least five others and igniting a fire that sent up towering plumes of black smoke that could be seen for miles around Wichita, officials and witnesses said.

Only the pilot was on the plane, but it wasn't immediately clear how many people were inside the building at Wichita Mid-Continent Airport where at least four people found dead, authorities said. Four more people remained unaccounted for hours after the crash.

Two sweeps of the building found no more victims, though officials cautioned that a small portion containing a simulator room had not been checked because of structural dangers from the crash. Special equipment was being brought to the site that would allow access to the remaining space.

The plane, identified as a twin-engine Beechcraft King Air, crashed into a building that FlightSafety International uses to train pilots to fly Cessna planes, company spokesman Steve Phillips said.

It appeared to strike the top of the building and ignite what Wichita Fire Chief Ronald D. Blackwell described as a "horrific" fire.

Jeff Papacek, 39, of Wichita, said he saw a "giant fireball" as he was heading to his engineering job at Learjet, which has a testing facility at the airport. He said he didn't see the crash because there were too many buildings in the way, but he said the plane caught his attention beforehand.

"We are used to planes flying straight with the runway and this plane just didn't look like it was lined up and was way too low for the direction it was going," Papacek said, adding that he drove to the crash site to see what was happening and saw the building fire raging.

The crash did not appear to disrupt passenger traffic at the airport, as planes could be seen taking off from other runways.

Located several miles west of downtown Wichita, an aircraft manufacturing hub, Wichita Mid-Continent is used by private aircraft and served by several airlines and their regional affiliates, including American, Southwest, Delta, United and Allegiant. It saw more than 13,000 departures and about 1.4 million passengers last year.

The crash is the latest in a string of incidents at the airport. In December, an avionics technician was arrested after a monthslong undercover sting when he allegedly tried to drive a van filled with inert explosives onto the tarmac in a plot prosecutors say was intended to kill as many people as possible. Then in January, an Oklahoma man rammed his pickup truck through a security gate at the airport. In September, the airport conducted a large-scale disaster exercise featuring the mock crash of a 737 aircraft.

FBI spokeswoman Bridget Patton said it is "too early to rule anything out" about the cause of Thursday's crash and confirmed the FBI is assisting in the investigation, but stressed the agency's protocol is to respond to "any and all plane crashes at airports."