NTSB investigating plane crash in Florida peanut field

WILLISTON, Fla. - The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating a deadly plane crash in Williston on Sunday.

The Levy County Sheriff's Office says there were three people on board when the plane crashed, and investigators say they haven't found any survivors.

LCSO says the pilot filed a flight plan to land in Williston for refueling on the way home from Kentucky.

A witness to the crash told FOX 13 that the plane exploded when it crashed into a peanut field.

He also said that another plane was in the area and also tried landing but just circled the area until first responders arrived.

According to the FAA, the plane was a multi-engine Beech Baron, registered to an address in St. Pete.

The NTSB hasn't released any information about the pilot of passengers.

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What they're saying:

Aviation experts say radar data shows the plane started descending at a rapid rate of more than 3,000 feet per minute, at over 250 miles per hour. 

"Something happened in the last 60 seconds of that flight that was catastrophic," Fred Tecce, a commercially rated pilot said.

"When an airplane loses control or comes apart, the wreckage is usually fairly combined," Tecce said. It just comes down straight, boom. And this aircraft actually hit the ground in a particular direction, kind of consistent with its last known flight path, and then came to rest, and there was obviously a large post-crash fire, so it tells me that there was not a fuel problem."

Tecce says there are a lot of variables in terms of what could've happened in the air leading up to the crash. He says investigators will look at the plane's engines, the wreckage, any flight data the plane may have recorded, weather and other factors that could've contribued to the crash.

"They'll be to tell whether or not the engines were capable of producing power, and they'll be able to tell how the props are bent, whether they were producing power at the time the airplane hit the ground," he said. "They'll be able to tell if things had fractured before or are more consistent with impact damage."

Another expert says the plane appears to have taken a nose dive. Experts say it's unclear exactly what happened, but they say something appears to have happened very quickly and with little to no time to react.

What's next:

The NTSB continues to investigate the crash. A spokesperson for the NTSB says more information will be available in a preliminary report issued within 30 days.

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