A small plane crashed on Friday morning in a remote area of Saratoga County, New York, claiming the life of its pilot and leaving a passenger severely injured.
The Saratoga County Sheriff's Office was dispatched to Wyndham Way in the town of Milton, where the plane had crashed, at 10:24 a.m. After arriving, emergency crews found the pilot had been killed, and the sole passenger survived but was critically injured, requiring immediate transport to Albany Medical Center. Authorities said the identities of both remain undisclosed pending family notification.
More than a dozen agencies responded to the crash.
Federal investigators have assumed control of determining what caused the crash, with the National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration leading the investigation to examine what led to the crash.
The incident adds to a series of recent crashes. According to the National Transportation Safety Board, 2025 has already witnessed 222 fatal and 966 non-fatal plane crashes, which still represents an overall downward trend in aviation-related accidents since 2019.
In mid-October, a Beechcraft small plane crashed near Hicks Airfield in Tarrant County, Texas, killing pilot Michael Daly and the passenger, his father, John Daly. The aircraft struck 18-wheelers and trailers, igniting a fire that took 60 firefighters approximately 35 minutes to extinguish.
In July, search teams located a Piper PA-28 that vanished near Yellowstone National Park by tracking a victim's smartwatch. All three occupants—Tennessee residents Rodney Conover, 60, Madison Conover, 23, and Kurt Enoch Robey, 55, of Utah—died in that crash south of West Yellowstone.
That same month, Olympic National Park in Washington became the site of another crash when a Murphy SR3500 Moose aircraft crashed in a densely forested area north of Irely Lake Trailhead. One person died and two others were taken to a Level 1 Trauma Center with injuries, according to the National Park Service.
Earlier in July, a North Carolina family of four was killed when their private plane crashed in a field northeast of Sanford. The victims included Travis Buchanan, 35, his wife, Candace, 35, and their children Aubrey, 10, and Walker, 9.
August brought a rare survival story when a pilot managed an emergency landing of his single-engine plane into the ocean near Oak Island Pier on North Carolina's coast. Pilot Mark Finkelstein, with 17 years of flying experience, landed on the water after his engine failed. "Once it stopped, I just said, 'Okay, I'm really going to be doing a water landing,' you know, there's no alternative at this point," Finkelstein told local media. He was rescued with only minor injuries.
The Milton crash remains under investigation.