A business jet registered to a company run by retired NASCAR driver Greg Biffle crashed Thursday with six people on board, authorities said.
The Iredell County, North Carolina, sheriff confirmed there were fatalities but did not identify who was on board the plane, which erupted into a large fire when it crashed upon returning to the airport in Statesville shortly after takeoff Thursday morning.
The airport is 45 miles north of Charlotte, the home of most NASCAR teams.
Golfers playing next to the airport were shocked as they witnessed the disaster, even dropping to the ground at the Lakewood Golf Club while the plane was overhead. The ninth hole was covered with debris.
"We were like, 'Oh my gosh! That's way too low,'" Joshua Green of Mooresville told The Associated Press. "It was scary."
The National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration were investigating. Drizzle and clouds were present at the time of the crash, according to AccuWeather.
The plane took off from the airport shortly after 10 a.m. but then returned and was attempting to land there, according to tracking data posted by FlightAware.com.
The plane had been scheduled to fly later from Sarasota, Florida, to Treasure Cay International Airport in the Bahamas before returning to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and then to Statesville by evening, data showed.
Video from WSOC-TV showed first responders rushing onto the runway as flames burned near scattered wreckage from the plane. The airport, according to its website, offers corporate aviation facilities for Fortune 500 companies and several NASCAR teams.
The tragedy adds to the list of plane crashes this year around the world, including the plane-helicopter collision that killed 67 in Washington, the Air India crash that killed 260 in India, and a crash in Russia's Far East that claimed 48 lives. Fourteen people, including 11 on the ground, died in a UPS cargo plane crash in Kentucky.
Information from The Associated Press contributed to this report.
