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A single-engine plane crashed in Tennessee Saturday morning, killing three people on board, officials said.
The Mooney M20TN crashed south of the Upper Cumberland Regional Airport in Sparta, according to a statement from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Upper Cumberland Regional Airport Director Dean Selby said the airport heard reports of an aircraft going down at approximately 11:50 a.m. Shortly after, the Memphis Air Traffic Control Center called the airport to say it had lost communication and contact with an aircraft.
The plane departed from Alabama and was on its descent into the airport when it crashed, Selby said.
Emergency management and fire and rescue workers, along with volunteers, looked for the crash site and were able to find it after the airport sent a plane up to search from the air, the director said.
Selby described the area where the plane was found as “remote.”
The Federal Aviation Administration, which said it is investigating, arrived on-site a few hours after the crash, Selby said. The National Transportation Safety Board, which is leading the investigation, will arrive Sunday.
Selby said the airport is not releasing any of the victims’ identities until next of kin are notified.
Sparta is about 96 miles southeast of Nashville.
A number of small planes have gone down in recent weeks, each time killing all the passengers on board.
Last month, a plane crashed into a home Brooklyn Park, Minnesota. About two weeks later, another went down in upstate New York.
Three were killed when a plane crashed into a river in Nebraska last Saturday, and four more died Sunday when a single-engine aircraft crashed in Illinois.
Rebecca Cohen is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.
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