Plane crashes into Akron home, killing two aboard, family escapes

A 1963 Piper Cherokee single-engine plane crashed into a home in Akron’s Coventry Crossing development and burst into flames, killing the two people aboard while a family inside escaped unharmed. The aircraft had taken off from Akron Fulton Airport and went down around 3:45 p.m. Thursday in the 2200 block of Canterbury Circle, across the street from the Topgolf Akron facility.

Fire officials said the wreckage produced heavy black smoke and a large fire as crews rushed to the south-side neighborhood. Akron Fire Department officials evacuated the damaged home and another nearby house, but no one on the ground was injured. Akron District Fire Chief Sierjie Lash said all four residents of the struck home were inside when the plane hit.

Authorities said both of the people killed were found inside the aircraft. Their identities had not been released in the initial hours after the crash. The plane, also identified as a Piper PA-28, went down just a few miles from the airport from which it had departed, turning a quiet residential block into the scene of a fast-moving emergency.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol, Akron Police, Akron Fire Department, the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board were involved or expected to be involved in the investigation. The crash adds to broader concerns about small-aircraft safety near populated corridors, where a mechanical problem, navigation error or other failure can send a plane from a routine flight path into a neighborhood in seconds.

For Akron residents, the outcome could have been far worse. The aircraft struck a house occupied by a couple and their two children, but the family got out safely before the fire spread further. With two homes evacuated and a major blaze briefly centered in the middle of a residential street, investigators now face the question of how a plane leaving Akron Fulton Airport ended up in a subdivision lined with homes, cars and people going about a spring afternoon.