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The names of the five people who died in the central Texas plane crash taking a pickleball team to a tournament have been released.
On board the flight were four players from the Amarillo Pickleball Club of Amarillo, Texas, Hayden Dillard, Seren Wilson, Brooke Skypala and Stacy Hedrick, along with pilot Justin Appling.
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A crashed Cessna plane is seen in a wooded area on Round Rock Road in Wimberley, Texas, on Friday, May 1, 2026. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP)
Dan Dyer, president of the Amarillo Pickleball Club, said he had played many games with four of the five people who died.
“I gave them medals. They were great players. They wanted to win some games,” Dyer said. “Every weekend there are dozens of tournaments. Some people get the virus, some don’t. But once they do, they travel to attend a tournament.”
A small plane crashes near Hicks Airfield in Texas, reportedly causing multiple semi-trailer fires.
Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are on scene and serve as lead investigative agencies, DPS said in its statement Saturday.
But the cause of the accident has not yet been determined.
The plane crashed in Wimberley, a city 40 miles southwest of Austin, at 11 p.m. Thursday.
A crashed Cessna plane is seen in a wooded area on Round Rock Road in Wimberley, Texas, on May 1, 2026. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman)
Dyer said a second plane was traveling to the event from Amarillo at the same time. Authorities said he landed safely at the New Braunfels airport, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northeast of San Antonio.
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“I haven’t heard from him,” the pilot of the second plane said, according to air traffic control audio.
A handler responded: “He started moving erratically and now his trail has disappeared from range. So, we want to make sure everything is okay with him.”
At least one pilot in the area confirmed that the troubled plane’s emergency locator device had issued a distress signal. The driver called 911.
It was mostly cloudy in the New Braunfels area shortly before the crash and there was a thunderstorm two hours later, the National Weather Service said.
A Cessna aircraft crashed in a wooded area on Round Rock Road in Wimberley, Texas, on May 1, 2026. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman/AP)
Wimberley, with a population of approximately 3,000, and New Braunfels, with a population of approximately 116,000, are tourist destinations in the Texas Hill Country.
