A small plane that crashed Friday night near a Murray County, Ga., home, killing two of the three people on board, had only half a gallon of usable gas left in its tank, investigators said.
The pilot and both passengers either were certified to fly or studying to be pilots, officials said Monday.
Abraham George, the 24-year-old pilot, changed his flight plan to land at the Dalton Municipal Airport instead of Chattanooga late Friday but crashed a few miles from the airport after giving the emergency code, said Corky Smith, the National Transportation Safety Board investigator who is leading the probe.
“He didn’t state what the emergency was,” Smith said.
The Cessna 172 had only one quart of fuel in the right fuel tank and 21/2 gallons of fuel in the left tank, and the last two gallons of fuel in a tank are unusable in that type of aircraft, Smith said.
Smith said he could not comment on whether the plane ran out of gas because the safety board has to rule on the cause of the accident. He will turn in his preliminary report today, but a five-member board will review it and make the final decision.
When the plane crashed, passenger Jaskinder Samra, 21, of England, was killed by a blow to the abdomen and George died from impact to his head, neck and torso, said Larry Ballew, the Murray County coroner.
The other passenger, Shawn Thacker, of England, was injured and airlifted to Erlanger hospital in Chattanooga. He was listed in fair condition Monday, according to hospital officials.
Samra’s relatives said she had moved from England to Florida about six months ago to enroll in flight school and become a pilot.
“She wanted to do this, but everyone said it’s dangerous,” her uncle, Paul Sanghera, said by telephone Monday.
The single-engine Cessna 172 that George was flying belonged to Flight Training Express LLC, an Edgewater, Fla., company.
Flight Training Express did not return calls and could not be reached for comment.
Ballew said all three people on board the aircraft either were certified to fly or were students, but he could not confirm what school they were attending.
Smith said the trip was a personal flight and neither George nor Samra worked for or attended classes at Flight Training Express.
The airplane left Smyrna Beach, Fla., about 7 p.m. Friday and was scheduled to land in Chattanooga about 11:30 p.m., Smith said.
But at 10:42, the pilot called Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport to cancel his flight and land in Dalton, Smith said. Two minutes later he called back to say he had an emergency but didn’t explain what it was, Smith said.
Witnesses said the plane plummeted toward the ground, making a whistling noise before clipping a tree and bouncing into a ditch.
Ballew said the pilot and passengers were headed to Chicago to visit family, and Chattanooga was a fuel stop along the way.
The remains of George and Samra will be released to their families by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation crime lab this week, Ballew said.
Contact Joy Lukachick at jlukachick@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6659. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/jlukachick.