There is a particular stillness that settles over a wooded hillside after something has fallen from the sky. In Sauk County, Wisconsin, that stillness arrived Tuesday night, when a small plane on a routine return flight encountered ice, requested permission to descend, and never completed the journey. Six people were aboard. None survived.
The crash occurred around 9:30 p.m. in the town of Dellona, near Mirror Lake State Park, about forty miles northwest of Madison . The Sauk County Sheriff’s Office received multiple reports of a downed aircraft and found the wreckage in a densely wooded area . Five adults and one child were pronounced dead at the scene . Their identities have not been released, pending notification of family .
The plane was a single-engine Piper Meridian PA-46, a six-seat aircraft that departed Kenosha Regional Airport around 8:45 p.m. on a return trip to Menomonie . According to preliminary information from the National Transportation Safety Board, the pilot was flying at 24,000 feet when he reported icing and requested to descend . Air traffic control approved the descent. The plane then “entered a right descending turn that increased in rate until communications and data tracking were lost,” the NTSB said .
Icing occurs when supercooled water droplets freeze on contact with an aircraft’s exterior, disrupting airflow over the wings and reducing lift . Rain was falling in the area as a thunderstorm moved through at the time of the crash, according to the sheriff’s department . Investigators are reviewing the air traffic control transmissions and whether weather played a role .
No one on the ground was injured, and no structures were damaged . A police scanner captured an officer’s call reporting what appeared to be an airplane seat with a deceased person in a front yard . The area remained closed through midday Wednesday as investigators worked .
The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are leading the investigation . The NTSB will examine the wreckage, the pilot’s actions, and the weather conditions to determine what caused the plane to go down. For now, the wooded hillside near Mirror Lake holds the only evidence of a flight that ended far too soon.
The images accompanying this article are AI-generated and serve illustrative purposes only.
Sources: Anadolu Ajansı, The New York Times, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Daily Mail, WGTD, MyNorthwest.com
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