A small plane crashed in woodland in Texas, killing all five people onboard heading to a pickleball tournament, officials and locals said Friday.
The twin-engine Cessna 421C was “traveling at a high rate of speed” toward New Braunfels National Airport when it crashed in a fireball just after 11 p.m. Thursday, Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra said.
The pilot was flying alongside another plane heading to the same tournament — but so far “there is no indication of a midair collision,” Becerra stressed.
The small plane crash in Wimberley, Texas, on Friday, May 1, 2026. APThe second pilot had radioed concerns about losing contact with the downed Cessna, with an air traffic controller also expressing alarm.
“He started to move erratically and now his track is disappeared from the scope,” a controller said. “So we want to make sure everything’s all right with him.”
The pilot and four passengers — all adults — were confirmed dead. They had not been identified as of early Friday afternoon.
Photos showed the burned-out shell of the plane in trees close to a building in Wimberley, a city about 40 miles southwest of Austin.
The plane is seen in a wooded area as investigators probe the scene in Wimberley, Texas. AP“I just heard a loud crash. I felt everything vibrate,” Stacey Rohr, who lives nearby, told KEYE-TV, comparing the roar to “like an earthquake.”
“It looked like the back of my house was all in flames,” Rohr also told the Austin American-Statesman.
“Everything was up in flames. It was crazy.”
The Cessna had taken off from Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle around two hours earlier, heading to New Braunfels National Airport with the other plane, which landed safely.
The small Cessna aircraft after it crashed in Wimberley, Texas. APFlight tracking data show it took a sudden, sharp turn before crashing — then plunged from 13,600 feet to about 7,000 feet before it stopped transmitting data, according to the American-Statesman.
Cecil Keith said he heard what sounded like an engine backfiring with a “pow, pow, pow” when the plane flew over his house just before the crash.
“Something was definitely wrong,” he told KEYE-TV.
It was mostly cloudy in the New Braunfels area shortly before the crash and there was a thunderstorm two hours later, the National Weather Service said.
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating.
Wimberley, a tourist and hiking town of around 3,000 on the Blanco River, is a popular Hill Country destination.
With Post wires
