MARIETTA — An airplane carrying four people crashed and burst into flames after a botched landing at an air strip near a restaurant on Saturday, authorities said.
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One person died; two were injured.
Bobbie Blanchard, 50, of Arlington, Texas, died at the scene of the crash, Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper Betsy Randolph said.
Those who survived were all Dallas residents, Randolph said. The pilot, Michael Phillips, 34, was taken to Parkland Hospital in Dallas, she said.
Passenger Calvin Carter, 36, was taken by ambulance to a Marietta hospital where he was treated and released. Roger Burke, 41, refused treatment at the scene, Randolph said.
The fixed-wing twin-engine Beech 58 crashed shortly before 3 p.m. near McGehee's Catfish Restaurant, said Roland Herwig, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Oklahoma City.
"Preliminarily, we're saying the landing gear collapsed and the (plane) crashed off the runway,” Herwig said.
The plane is registered to Phillips Aviation Inc. in Dallas, FAA Internet records show.
The landing strip is within walking distance of the catfish eatery, but those inside didn't hear or see anything, said Wanda Shellenberger, restaurant manager.
A woman outside saw the crash and told restaurant workers a plane crashed and erupted in flame, she said.
The plane was not being tracked on radar, and Roland didn't know where the plane was coming from.
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board in Fort Worth, Texas, and the FAA in Oklahoma City were en route to the crash site, Herwig said.
Restaurant has airfield
McGehee's Catfish Restaurant, which opened 35 years ago, is a fly-in restaurant, operating its own airstrip.
The sod strip is about 2,500 feet long and 55 feet wide. As many as 40 planes a day use the airstrip, Shellenberger said.
The airstrip is well camouflaged by the surrounding trees. A gravel road crosses the runway midfield, according to a story on SW Aviator magazine's Web site.
The most recent accident at the airstrip occurred June 10, 2005, NTSB online records show. The non-injury crash involved a single-engine Cessna.
During takeoff, that airplane ran off the end of the runway and spun before sliding down an embankment.
Contributing: The Associated Press
