A small plane with four people on board crashed on Saturday morning in a field beside a roadway in rural Illinois, officials said.
All four people died in the crash, the Illinois State Police said in a statement on Sunday, adding that an “active and ongoing investigation” was taking place at the scene.
The plane crashed around 10:15 a.m. in Trilla, about 65 miles south of Champaign. Debris was scattered across the roadway, which was expected to be closed until later Sunday, the police said.
The plane, a single-engine Cessna 180, crashed about a dozen miles from Coles County Memorial Airport in Mattoon, Ill., the Federal Aviation Administration said. All of the occupants were from Menomonie, Wis., and were pronounced dead at the scene, the police said.
The F.A.A. and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating. It was unknown whether anyone on the ground was injured.
“We keep those impacted by the plane crash in our thoughts today,” Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois said on social media. “Thank you to the first responders who rushed to the scene.”
In the past week, other small plane crashes have killed at least nine people.
On Friday night, a small plane crashed into a river in eastern Nebraska, killing three people on board, officials said. On April 12, a small twin-engine plane crashed in a muddy field in New York, killing all six people on board.
Flying remains the safest mode of transportation, experts say, but an unusual spate of crashes involving commercial airliners at the start of the year has raised travelers’ anxieties about flying.
Adeel Hassan is a reporter and editor on the National Desk. He is a founding member of Race/Related, and much of his work focuses on identity and discrimination. He started the Morning Briefing for NYT Now and was its inaugural writer. He also served as an editor on the International Desk.
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