Two small planes collided in mid-air at the North Las Vegas Airport on Sunday, killing four people, per multiple reports.
The collision between two single-engine planes with two people on board each occurred at around 12 p.m. local time. A Piper PA-46 was preparing to land when it collided with a Cessna 172, the Federal Aviation Administration said, per the Associated Press.
The City of North Las Vegas Fire Department tweeted pictures of the accident on Sunday evening, and confirmed the deaths of all four passengers, but did not identify them.
"Preliminary information indicates that the Piper PA-46 was preparing to land when it collided with the Cessna 172," the FAA said in a statement. “The Piper crashed into ... a field east of Runway 30-Right and the Cessna fell into a water retention pond."
Both the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the cause of the crash.
The FAA said that two runways closed down at the airport for first responders and authorities to investigate, while the rest of the airport remained open, according to CBS News.
Dore Rodine, a 58-year-old who has been flying for over 40 years and owns a single-engine plane at the airport, told the Las-Vegas Review Journal that he was "extremely surprised" that a mid-air collision occurred at the North Las Vegas Airport.
"It’s very wide open," Rodine said. "There’s not a lot of buildings or structures in this area, and with an active control tower at the time that it occurred. I’m really surprised that there wasn’t better terrain awareness either by one of the pilots or by the control tower."
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