Search underway for eight passengers of a downed airplane that crashed off North Carolina coast

A private plane that crashed Sunday night off the coast of North Carolina was carrying eight people – including four teens – was returning from a hunting trip led by a successful local entrepreneur.

On the day before the crash, businessman Hunter Parks hosted a wildfowl hunting expedition on his Lake Mattamuskeet-area property for veterans and youth in keeping with an annual tradition he held.

He was joined by his girlfriend Stephanie Fulcher, her son Kole McInnis, and three of his teenaged friends.

The group was among eight people aboard a Pilatus PC-12 airplane that crashed four miles east of Drum Inlet. Before it disappeared, the single-engine aircraft was spotted on radar ‘behaving erratically,’ the US Coast Guard said.

Efforts are now underway to recover the plane. 

Shortly before the plane took off, Fulcher shared photos on Facebook of the teens settled onto the aircraft, munching on McDonalds burgers and gazing tiredly toward the camera as they prepared to return to their Down East homes. 

A single-engine passenger plane carrying eight people went down off the coast of Drum Inlet, North Carolina on Sunday

Union Point Church Pastor Aaron Golden, who lives in a neighboring county, lead the community in mourning through a Facebook post.

‘I know all Down East is in mourning,’ Golden said. ‘Down East is such a tightknit community it has such a deep heritage and all of those on that plane yesterday really represented that for the Down East community.’

Coast Guard boats, as well as an MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter military aircrew, launched a search of the area Sunday to find the single-engine aircraft and on Monday added a Coast Guard C-130 fixed-wing aircraft to assist efforts.

Although it can be challenging to recover downed aircrafts in bodies of water, a spokesman said he’s optimistic crews will be able to locate the missing plane.

‘It can be very difficult, but we’re well equipped to provide adequate search efforts, especially since we have so many partner agencies working with is,’ spokesman Edward Wargo told DailyMail.com. ‘This is something the Coast Guard trains for, and we’ve experienced this before.’

Search crews are now working to recover the Pilatus PC-12 single engine airplane, similar to the one shown in this 2008 file photo