Federal agencies begin investigating Sunday’s fiery Manheim Township plane crash

• By Jack Panyard/LNP | LancasterOnline

The chaotic, fiery scene caused by a plane crash Sunday afternoon in Manheim Township yielded to a painstaking investigation Monday, as federal aviation officials began picking through the wreckage of the six-seat, single-engine aircraft.

Less than 24 hours after the crash, dozens of Civil Air Patrol personnel wearing fatigues remained on duty, cordoning off a parking lot in the northern section of Brethren Village retirement community, about 550 feet south of Airport Road along Fairview Drive, where the plane went down just after 3:15 p.m. Sunday with five people aboard.

The five passengers were transported to Lancaster General Hospital, according to a Lancaster General Hospital spokesperson. Two patients were then flown to Lehigh Valley Health Network’s burn center near Allentown, and another was driven there by ambulance. Two passengers were treated at LGH and discharged Sunday night.

An LNP | LancasterOnline reporter went to the Rapho Township home of the plane’s listed owner, Matthew W. White, but no one was home. White is listed as a partner with Venture Jets Inc., a private charter company. In a statement issued Monday afternoon, the company confirmed that White was piloting the plane on Sunday.

Venture Jets said the flight was not associated with its own operations.

“Thankfully, Matt and his passengers survived the mishap and are in good medical care. Our full support and prayers go out to them for a speedy recovery,” the company said in its statement.

No one on the ground was hurt, according to Manheim Township police Chief Duane Fisher. Brethren Village is home to more than 1,000 senior citizens and employs more than 500 staff.

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READ MORE: Full coverage of the Manheim Township plane crash [roundup]

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Witnesses said the Beechcraft Bonanza airplane, which had just taken off from Lancaster Airport en route to Springfield, Ohio, took a nosedive into the Brethren Village property. Investigators say it skidded more than 100 feet.

Two nearby trees appeared to have their tops sheared off as the plane angled into a parking lot, destroying five cars and damaging seven more.

The remains of the plane were neatly sectioned off with police tape Monday morning. The front cabin of the plane was smashed and melted and nearby cars incinerated. From a certain angle, the scene more closely resembled a war memorial than an active crash investigation.

Air patrol members dutifully took measurements around the crash site, mere feet from ground-level apartments, and milled around quietly as motorists and residents slowed their commutes to gawk at the scene. Brethren Village seemed undisturbed beyond the charred scab of a crash scene, with some visitors and residents moving casually past the remains.

The investigation

The Federal Aviation Administration’s preliminary accident report lists the crash as an accident and notes the plane crashed during takeoff. It also described the five passengers’ injuries as minor, with no fatalities.

For the next day or so, the FAA will continue to investigate the crash and share information with the National Transportation Safety Board, according to NTSB spokesperson Keith Holloway. A preliminary report on the crash will be available in about a month.

The NTSB sends its personnel to all fatal air crashes and collaborates with the FAA on some nonfatal crashes.

Holloway said the final report, including the cause of the crash, could take up to two years to complete. When a Lancaster-bound Southern Airways flight made an emergency landing on a public road near Washington Dulles Airport in Virginia last January, the NTSB issued a preliminary report about a month later. It has yet to issue its final report.

Lancaster Airport Authority, which oversees operations at the airport, is not part of the investigation, and the authority’s director of operations, Austin J. Beiler, did not respond to a request for information Monday.

The Environmental Protection Agency said an emergency response team has been on the scene since Sunday to monitor fuel runoff.

In a statement sent Monday, EPA officials said an unknown amount of fuel had discharged from the plane into a stormwater basin. An environmental contractor is working to clean the fuel from the stormwater system.

“DEP staff will continue to monitor and provide updates on the environmental cleanup,” officials said. 

President Donald Trump briefly addressed the crash Sunday, as the nation has seen a series of fatal aviation crashes in 2025.

Taking questions from the press on Air Force One, Trump was asked about the crash in the context of safety concerns voiced by U.S. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy about the FAA being gutted via directives from Elon Musk through his Department of Government Efficiency initiative.

“Well, that has nothing to do with the department,” Trump said. “That was a small plane, and that would have happened whether you had a big department or a small department as you understand. They have spates like this. You know, they have times when things happen a little bit more often than normal and then it goes back and you go many years without having a problem.”

This was the second aircraft emergency in less than a month in Lancaster County. On Feb. 5, a pilot made an emergency landing in a field in Drumore Township. No one was injured.

Lancaster Airport saw a helicopter crash in 2021 and an airplane crash in 2020. Neither crash was fatal.