Nine killed in aircraft crash in Hawaii

LOS ANGELES — A twin-engine skydiving aircraft crashed Friday evening near an airfield on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, killing all nine passengers on board, local authorities confirmed.

"With extreme sadness HDOT reports there were 9 souls on board the King Air twin engine plane that went down near Dillingham Airfield with no apparent survivors," the Hawaii Department of Transportation tweeted.

Honolulu Fire Chief Manuel Neves told reporters that Honolulu Fire Department received the first call of the downed craft at about 6:30 pm local time (0830 GMT) and when firefighters arrived shortly after the accident, they found the wreckage of the craft fully engulfed in flames.

He said there were nine people on board and nobody survived from the fatal crash.

It is not clear so far whether the craft was taking off or landing when it crashed, Neves said, adding crews are gathering information and waiting for an investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration.

He confirmed that some family members of victims were on the ground when the crash occurred and may have seen the plane go down.

The plane crashed on North Shore in Oahu, part of the Hawaiian island chain and home to the state capital, Honolulu.

Dillingham Airfield, 56 km northwest of downtown Honolulu, is a general aviation airport operated by the Hawaii Department of Transportation under a 25-year lease from the US Army.

Friday's tragedy is one of the deadliest accidents for a civilian airplane in Hawaii's modern history. In 1992, nine people were killed when a tour aircraft crashed into mountainous terrain when it took off.