Plane crashes at Kalamazoo/Battle Creek Airport

KALAMAZOO, Mich. (NEWSCHANNEL 3) - A plane has crashed at the Kalamazoo Battle Creek International Airport.

It happened in the 2200 block of East Kilgore Road which is closed as of 11:00.

The plane crashed in a parking lot.

The police and fire presence has ratcheted down on East Kilgore Road but there are still a number of emergency services personnel and investigators on the stretch of road that has been closed since just before 9:00 a.m. Tuesday morning.

What is left of the plane can be seen resting in the parking lot of Great Lakes Aviation. The crash killed the pilot.

According to authorities the plane was trying to take off from the airport en route to Muskoka, Ontario when it experienced some mechanical problem and then crash landed at the north end of the runway. It burst through the security fences and then came to a halt in the parking lot.

Kalamazoo Public Safety say the plane did catch fire and was on fire for a few minutes, but it was quickly extinguished.

Authorities are not sure what exactly killed the pilot but they have not removed the body as of 11:00.

"What the initial report is, and what we're finding based on the scene is that the pilot crash landed just north of the airport, so not actually on the runway, and then skidded into the parking lot through one of the security fences and then stopped just south of the road," said Assistant Police Chief of KDPS Brian Uridge.

The pilot was the only person on board. The single engine Beechcraft Bonanza A36 is not a Western Michigan University plane and does not belong to Great Lakes Aviation either.

The road remains closed and authorities are waiting on the FAA and the NTSB.

Planes have been seen taking off and landing at the airport, so there appears to be no significant impact on service.

Two Pfizer employees who were loading a truck at the time of the crash say they saw the plane take off at a low speed, start to waver and began to flap back and forth before banking off to the right side of Great Lakes Aviation.

That's when they say it exploded into a massive fireball.

Other witnesses say they saw something similar.

As soon as the plane crashed the airport locked down. The Beechcraft crashed at about 8:45. Airport authorities shut down the terminal to figure out the next step.

Although air traffic at the airport was shut down for a short time it did not affect any passengers there.

The airport director tells Newschannel 3 any time there is an incident at or near the airport all runways are shut down for inspection.

"At approximately 8:43 we had an incident, or a notification of an incident, at that point our runways were shut down. Our runways were shut down for a half hour and reopened at 9:15 after an inspection of the runway," said Airport Director Cliff Moshoginis.

There were no commercial flights scheduled in or out of the airport during the brief shut down.