Plane which took off from Colorado airport crashes in California, 2 dead
Two people were killed Saturday when a single-engine turboprop crashed near Lake Tahoe in eastern California.
The plane, a Daher TBM 700, left Centennial Airport in south Denver at 4:22 p.m. Mountain Time, according to flight data on FlightAware.com. It was scheduled to arrive at the Truckee Tahoe Airport three hours and 16 minutes later.
Social media posts from the Truckee police and fire departments indicate the plane impacted the ground north of the airport. There are no report of injuries to anyone outside of the aircraft.
Daher is a French manufacturer of aircraft formerly known as Socata. The particular plane that crashed was built in 2022, according to FAA records.
The Truckee Airport posted a photo of a Daher TBM similar to the type which crashed.
The two people aboard the plane have not been officially identified. But the plane's registered owner was a Nevada-based company, Avram Enterprises. An online business profile shows a person named Liron Petrushka is one of only two agents of that company.
A report published Sunday by the Times of Israel identifies Liron Petrushka and his wife, Naomi, as the two victims of the crash. Liron Petrushka was a former professional soccer player in Israel and more recently a tech entrepreneur in the U.S. with his wife, per the article.
In it, the chairman of Petrushka's former soccer team, Einav Hazenvald, issued a statement:
"The club bows its head for the death of Liron Petrushka and his wife. Liron grew up in the club from the age of 10 and passed through all the teams in the club, including the adults' team. He played with me in the youth team, where we won the national championship, as well as in the adult team."
Preliminary information on the crash from the Aviation Safety Network suggests the Petrushka's plane missed its approach to a northeast-to-southwest runway at the airport. The plane made a 180-degree turn over the airport and climbed in altitude in a presumed "go-around" maneuver for another attempt at landing. However, shortly after the plane turned over the airport, it started a "left-hand stalling spiral into the crash location."
The National Transportation and Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration began investigating the crash Sunday morning, according to the Truckee Tahoe Airport. The official cause of crashes are not determined for several months, as investigators collect the wreckage and reconstruct what remains of the aircraft.
However, the Aviation Safety Network's description of the incident matches the last moments of the plane's flight path as shown on FlightRadar24.com.
The plane landed in a subdivision between a line of railroad tracks and the Truckee River, per the Truckee Fire Department.
Prior to its fatal trip, the plane had been flown from Truckee, California to Colorado's Centennial Airport on March 27, per FlightAware's records. It had also flown to and from Truckee to San Carlos, Calif., Camarillo, Calif., and Portland since March 19.
