Investigators are looking into the cause of a plane crash that killed three Key West residents east of the Gainesville Regional Airport early Friday morning.
The plane was carrying Gordon Taylor, 52, who was going to Shands at UF to receive a kidney transplant, said Robert Valle, the owner of the plane and operations director of Air Key West.
The others in the plane were Taylor's wife, Barbara Taylor, 51, and pilot Andrew Ricciuti, 43, said Summer Hallett, spokeswoman for the Gainesville Police Department.
The Taylors had two daughters, Hallett said. Their daughter Kyle Taylor is a UF student, said Janine Sikes, UF spokeswoman.
Ricciuti, who began flying planes in the U.S. Navy, had been a pilot for more than 20 years. He had been with Air Key West for about three or four years, Hallett said.
Valle said Taylor received a call late Thursday night from Shands saying there was donor kidney available for him, but he needed to get there within eight hours to receive it.
The two-engine Partenavia P.68 plane took off from Key West at 12:30 a.m. Friday, Valle said.
Because the air traffic control tower in Gainesville was closed, air traffic control in Jacksonville cleared the plane to land at the Gainesville Regional Airport at 2:45 a.m., said Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen.
Bergen said when air traffic control did not hear back from the plane, it called Gainesville officials at 5:15 a.m.
Five local agencies, the FAA and the National Transport Safety Board responded to the 6800 block of Northeast 39th Avenue to search for any survivors of the crash, Bergen said.
"The plane crashed just short of the runway, killing all three passengers and destroying the plane," she said.
Robert Gretz, the senior air safety investigator of the National Transportation Safety Board, said the board would investigate the pilot, the plane and the environment over the next six months to a year before it could issue a probable cause for the crash.
