Two people who were killed when a private plane crashed at the Palm Beach County Park Airport in Lantana late Friday morning have been identified. One is believed to have been a flight instructor.
The victims were Ana Diego Matias, 20, of Lantana, and Stanley Sands, 76, of Lake Worth Beach, the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office said in a news release Sunday.
The two were in a Cessna 172 when it went down on airport property near Lantana Road and Congress Avenue shortly after 11 a.m. Friday, authorities said. The aircraft was found east of Runway 16 in the northeast section of the airport.
Sands and Matias were found dead inside the plane, PBSO said.
The airport houses several flight training schools, and WPBF, a West Palm Beach ABC affiliate, reported that the occupants were a flight instructor and student. The station noted that a flight-tracking website logged the plane as having taken off minutes before the crash was reported.
A Federal Aviation Administration database of certified airmen lists Sands as a certified flight instructor for single-engine airplanes, airline transport pilot, ground instructor and flight engineer.
The crash is under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, the PBSO spokeswoman said.
Friday’s plane crash was the third in just over a week in South Florida.
On Thursday, a banner plane crashed at North Perry Airport in Pembroke Pines, leaving its pilot hospitalized. And on May 17, another banner plane from North Perry crashed outside of a busy shopping center in Hollywood, killing its 28-year old pilot.
