DERBY, Kan. (AP) Authorities say two men are dead after a small airplane crashed shortly after takeoff from Wichita’s Mid-Continent Airport.
Sedgwick County Sheriff Jeff Easter says witnesses reported seeing a wing and other debris falling from the twin-engine Cessna before it crashed and burned around 10:15 a.m. Friday in a field southeast of Derby.
The two men were the only people on board. Their names were not immediately released.
Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Tony Molinaro says the plane was bound for New Braunfels, Texas.
Molinaro says the 1975 Cessna was registered to Dufresne Inc., whose listed agent is the wife of traveling California minister Edward Dufresne.
A woman who answered the phone at Dufresne’s World Harvest Church in Murrieta, Calif., said there was no information available yet.