Married couple killed after plane smashes into motorway and bursts into flames

A married couple has died after a light aircraft crashed on a motorway during rush hour traffic.

The small plane carrying two passengers plunged onto Interstate 195 in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, at about 8.15am local time today.

It went up in flames after reportedly hitting a vehicle and landing on the grassy verge.

Two people on the plane died while one person on the ground was injured, according to state police.

Now the victims have been named as Thomas Perkins, 68, and his wife Agatha Perkins, 66, from Rhode Island, according to the Bristol County district attorney.

The couple were reportedly found inside the fuselage and pronounced dead at the scene.

The plane is thought to have been a Socata TBM 700 turboprop plane.

Footage shows the badly burnt plane wreckage on its side on the central reservation, with debris scattered around along the road.

It is thought the pilot had tried to land at a nearby airport, but ran into difficulty due to heavy rain and strong winds.

However, the state police said it appears the pilot did not provide the nearby New Bedford Regional Airport with a flight plan or passenger details.

Driver Jennifer Jacob, who was travelling on the motorway eastbound, was one of the first people to come across the wreckage before the emergency crews.

She told Nexstar’s WPRI: ‘It looked like a car at first because I wasn’t sure, and the smoke was so big I could smell it. I was like, “this isn’t a car.”‘

‘Then I looked across the way and noticed flames were going into the woods on the other side of the highway, so there were pieces of wreckage thrown throughout the middle of the highway and onto the middle of the center of the highway.

‘It was definitely a full wreck. There was no way anyone could have survived that.’

The major US motorway has been closed and is likely to remain shut for hours, officials warned.

The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to launch an investigation into the crash, which comes after a spate of fatal aviation incidents this year.

Last month, a small Beech BE35 plane crashed near a Denver airport, killing two people on board.

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