U.S. 68 reopened around 10 p.m. Friday night, according to a Twitter post from ODOT. The Ohio Department of Transportation and Environmental Protection Agency made repairs to the roadway, the patrol stated in a release issued Friday night.
Beerman was the only person aboard the single-engine Socata TBM-700 headed to Cincinnati Municipal Airport - Lunken Field from the Erie-Ottawa International Airport in Port Clinton, Ohio, said Elizabeth Cory, Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman.
Beerman departed around 2 p.m. from Port Clinton, the highway patrol said.
Urbana area residents lost power after Beerman’s plane made an unplanned descent and the aircraft struck power lines. The plane then struck the east side of U.S. 68 and went over the highway “into a ditch line, through a line of trees and then actually disintegrated in a large potato field,” said Lt. Brian Aller, commander of the patrol’s Springfield Post.
Debris from the plane was scattered on both sides of the roadway and dirt and fuel covered the road.
The highway patrol is investigating the crash, and the Civil Air Patrol and National Transportation Safety Board are on the way.
The Champaign County Coroner’s Office also responded.
The plane crash happened just south of the scene of an Aug. 7 deadly head-on traffic crash that killed four people from Springfield.
Earlier this week a flight instructor and student pilot force-landed a twin-engine plane several thousand feet past the runway at the Bellefontaine Regional Airport after both engines lost power during the plane’s departure.
No injuries were reported after the plane hit a fence and stopped at the edge of the airport’s property, according to the highway patrol.
