Passover Tragedy: Plane In Deadly Crash Departed Westchester Airport

WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NY — A family that should have been celebrating together, is instead mourning an unfathomable loss after a deadly Hudson Valley plane crash.

A private plane that crashed in upstate New York after departing Westchester County Airport on Saturday afternoon was carrying six members of a close-knit family of reputed physicians and student-athletes, including the "2022 NCAA Woman of the Year," on a journey to the Catskills for a birthday celebration and the Passover holiday, according to the AP.

A statement from the FAA said that a Mitsubishi MU-2B crashed in a field near Copake at around 12:15 p.m. on Saturday. The aircraft was headed to Columbia County Airport in Hudson. Six people were on board, the FAA said.

All six aboard were killed.

Columbia County Undersheriff Jacqueline Salvatore updated the press and said the plane crashed in the middle of a "pretty muddy" field, making access difficult. The FAA was at the scene with the National Transportation Safety Board en route; the investigation is expected to take at least a few days, she said.

Officials told Patch's Lisa Finn that the conditions were overcast at the time, and there had been snow earlier in the morning.

In a media briefing on Sunday, NTSB officials said that shortly before the crash, the pilot told air traffic control at Columbia County Airport that he had missed his initial approach, and requested a new approach plan. While preparing the new approach plan, air traffic controllers tried to alert the pilot to a dangerously low altitude at least three times, but got no response from the pilot and never received a distress call.

Crash investigators recovered video of the moments before the crash. That video evidence "appears to show that the aircraft was intact and crashed at a high rate of descent into the ground," the NTSB's Todd Inman told reporters.

The AP and Patch's Lisa Finn contributed to the report.