Saturday afternoon, out in a cornfield near Sandwich Illinois, firefighters found a single engine plane that had crashed and burst into flames. On board were the owner and pilot, 53-year-old Randall Hougham, and his passenger, 22-year-old Lauren Hamilton.
The 1946-era plane crashed in a field about a mile north of Sandwich at 1:49 p.m., Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said in a recorded statement.
Two people inside the plane were killed, she said.
The National Transportation Safety Board and the FAA are investigating. An official cause of the crash has not been determined, but Hougham had noted previous problems with the engine and a leaky fuel tank on a Web site dedicated to older planes.
"We were able to look at the aircraft on-site, and get a records description, and do a preliminary check of the flight controls on the airplane, and also looked at the engine," an NTSB investigator told NBC Chicago.
