The small plane that crashed in Vermont near an airport in Ferrisburgh in early September was on an instructional flight when it went down, killing the student pilot, the instructor and two passengers, according to a preliminary report released Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The victims, all from Connecticut, were identified as Delilah Van Ness, 15, of Middletown; Paul Pelletier, 55, of Columbia; Frank Rodriquez, 88, of Lebanon, and Susan Van Ness, 51, of Middletown, police said.
The four-seat, single-engine Piper aircraft took off from the Windham Airport in Connecticut at about 8:30 a.m. on Sept. 8 for a roughly two-hour flight to Basin Harbor Airport in Ferrisburgh, police said. The aircraft landed and the four people arrived for a brunch reservation at Basin Harbor, a resort on Lake Champlain. They left the restaurant shortly after noon to fly back to Connecticut, police said.
A witness recorded a video of the plane as it departed and rolled down the runway but did not capture its takeoff, the NTSB report said. The airplane crashed in a wooded area about 375 feet east of the end of a runway, according to the report.
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