A pilot was killed when a small plane crashed into a shopping center parking lot at a Texas shopping center Tuesday, authorities said.
Police in Plano, 20 miles north of Dallas, said the aircraft crashed directly outside a nail salon and Mama's Daughter's Diner just before 6 p.m.
"The pilot unfortunately lost their life in the tragic accident," police said on X. The pilot, the only person on board, has not been named while the family is informed.
Remarkably, no one else was hurt, and there were no reports of damage to buildings.
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating. The cause of the crash was unknown.
Video shot by witnesses and shared on social media showed a large fire engulfing the plane.
NBC Dallas-Fort Worth reported that the pilot appeared to become disoriented in the moments before the crash, citing unnamed people who have reviewed materials connected to the flight.
"Thankfully the plane did not land on or collide with anything," Daniel Daly of Plano Fire-Rescue said at a news conference at the scene Tuesday. "However, the fire resulting from the crash did involve an unoccupied parked vehicle."
"The only thing we can say is that the FAA and NTSB are both en route to the scene, and they will be handling all the investigation as the cause of the crash," he added.
The crash happened less than a half-mile from the single-runway Airpark-Dallas Airport, although it is not clear where the plane took off. The NTSB said in an update Wednesday it is investigating whether the runway could be connected to the crash. It is also looking to see whether the plane has a black box data recorder.
CORRECTION (Nov. 22, 2023, 9:20 a.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misstated the name of one of the organizations investigating the crash. It is the Federal Aviation Administration, not Federal Aviation Authority.
CORRECTION (Nov. 22, 2023, 1:58 p.m. ET): An earlier version of this article misstated the name of another agency investigating the crash. It is the National Transportation Safety Board, not the National Travel Safety Board.
