Staff, wire report

A pilot from Austintown working for a Mahoning County-based aerial surveying company was one of two people killed Tuesday when the small plane they were flying crashed near an airport in central Texas.

New Era Technology Inc. confirmed Friday the involvement of one of its flight crews in the fatal crash near Marlin, Texas, that killed pilots Cinnamon Franklin, 27, of Austintown, and 55-year-old Thomas L. Sands Jr. of Sugar Land, Texas, a city just southwest of Houston.

According to Franklin’s profile on the business networking site LinkedIn, she’s been with the Boardman company since January. Before that, Franklin worked for a little more than five years as operations supervisor at Indy South Greenwood Airport in Greenwood, Ind.

New Era Technology Inc. in a news release stated Franklin recently moved to Austintown.

The six-seat single-engine Cessna TU206H was en route from Houston Executive Airport to Waco Regional Airport when it went down just before 1 p.m. near Marlin Airport, about 30 miles short of its destination, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.

The aircraft crashed about 70 yards from the end of the airport’s lone runway, said Marlin City Manager Cedric Davis.

No cause was immediately determined. The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board will investigate.

Marlin is about 110 miles south of Dallas.

KWTX 10, a television station in Waco, Texas, reported the NTSB said Franklin and Sands were in the middle of a pipeline patrol flight, which means they were surveying a pipeline from the air. Experts said those flights involve a lot of maneuvering and flying close to the ground, according to the station.

New Era Technology Inc. did not wish to comment until after the investigation is complete. The company stated before the crash, it had flown millions of miles in the last 16 years without incident or accident.

The company’s website states it has a range of services and products for aerial surveillance and pipeline leak indication for the oil and gas industry. It is headquartered at 755 Boardman Canfield Road, but has local offices and hangar facilities in North Carolina and Texas.

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