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The names of the five people killed in the central Texas plane crash that took a pickleball team to a tournament have been released.
On board the plane were four Amarillo Pickleball Club players from 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, 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’ve given them medals. They were outstanding players. They were out to win some games,” Dyer said. “Every weekend there are dozens of tournaments. Some people get the bug; others don’t. But once they do, they travel to a tournament.”
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National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigators are on the scene and are serving as the lead investigative agencies, DPS said in its Saturday release.
But the cause of the accident has not yet been determined.
The plane crashed in Wimberley, a town 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 another plane left for the event from Amarillo at the same time. Authorities said it landed safely at the airport in New Braunfels, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northeast of San Antonio.
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“I haven’t heard anything from him,” the pilot of the other plane said, according to the report air traffic control sound.
A controller replied, “He started moving erratically and now his tracks have disappeared from the scope. So we want to make sure everything is okay with him.”
At least one pilot in the area confirmed that the troubled plane’s locator had sent out a distress signal. The controller 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 airplane 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 about 3,000, and New Braunfels, with a population of about 116,000, are tourist destinations in the Texas Hill Country.
