HOOKSETT, N.H. — A Rhode Island couple was killed Thursday afternoon when their small plane crashed onto Interstate 93 in Hooksett.
No motorists were involved in the crash.
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New Hampshire State Police said Herman and Doris Hassinger, both 83 and from Block Island, were killed in the crash.
Police said one body was in the plane. The other was ejected and was found a distance away in a wooded median strip.
The crash left the tail end of the aircraft on the passing lane of northbound I-93 in Hooksett.
Police said the single-engine Beechcraft hit a light pole alongside the northbound lanes just after 1 p.m., sending it crashing onto the highway and partially into the woods next to the road.
State police Lt. Chris Wagner said one of the plane’s wings hit the light pole, and the tail of the plane came to rest in the left lane of I-93 north.
The nose of the largely-intact plane was on the other side of the guardrail, in the wooded median between I-93 and I-293.
Wagner said state police received the first call about the crash at 1:10 p.m. When they arrived, there was no one at the scene who had witnessed the plane go down.
The Federal Aviation Administration said the plane had taken off from Nashua and was en route to Laconia.
A spokeswoman for the Rhode Island Airport Corporation said the plane had left Block Island Airport sometime Thursday.
FAA records show the plane was involved in an accident in August 2010 at Nashua’s Boire Field after the landing gear failed. The plane skidded about 700 feet before coming to rest on its belly.
That same plane was involved in a hard landing at the Falmouth Airpark on Cape Cod in July 1993 and was blown off a runway at Beaumont Municipal Airport in Texas while taxiing behind a much larger plane in 1979, according to FAA records.
According to the FAA registry, the plane was registered to Herman Hassinger Architects in Block Island. Hassinger was listed in the 2006 edition of “Who’s Who in America” as CEO of Herman Hassinger Architects in Moorestown, N.J. According to the biography in that edition, Hassinger was born in Germany, and he and Doris Hassinger have three children. Under “interests” he listed aviation and sailing.
Investigators from the Bureau of Aeronautics and the FBI were on the crash scene in Hooksett on Thursday and investigators from the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were en route. The NTSB will head the investigation..
The ramp from I-93 north to I-293 south was closed and I-93 was down to one lane of travel. Police asked drivers to avoid traveling in the area and to seek alternate routes.
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