A light-sport aircraft WT-10 Advantic crashed in Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast on July 28, killing all four people — including the pilot — on board, the State Emergency Service reported.
The plane fell at 1:40 p.m. on a private house in Sheparivka, a village located 580 kilometers southwest of Kyiv. No one was in the house at the time, according to the National Police.
According to Ivano-Frankivsk online media Kurs, the pilot was Ihor Tabaniuk, a professional pilot, instructor and co-owner of a small aviation airfield in Kolomyia, a city near the plane crash site.
The three passengers were U.S. citizens, Kurs reported.
Later, the United Jewish Community of Ukraine said that the three Americans on board were Hasidic Jews who traveled to the area as tourists.
It is not yet clear what caused the crash.
WT10 Advantic is a Slovak amateur-built aircraft that is supplied as a kit for amateur construction and can reach a speed of up to 280 kilometers per hour.
According to Aviation Safety Database, there have been at least 47 accidents involving WT9 Dynamic, the older two-seat version of WT10 Advantic. There is no record of crashes of WT10 Advantic on the database.
After the crash, the house caught on fire.
Ten rescuers and three fire trucks extinguished the flames less than 20 minutes after the crash, the Emergency Service reported.
It’s the second crash that happened in Ukraine in July.
On July 17, a Mi-2 helicopter fell in Mykolaiv Oblast, leaving the pilot and assistant pilot dead.
