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The names of the five people killed 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, as well as 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 played numerous 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, dozens of tournaments take place. Some people get the virus, some don’t. But once they do, they travel to a tournament.”
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Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are on scene and serving as the lead investigating 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 a second plane was flying to the event from Amarillo at the same time. Authorities said he landed safely at New Braunfels Airport, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northeast of San Antonio.
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“I haven’t heard anything from him,” the pilot of the second plane said, according to air traffic control audio.
A controller responded: “It started moving erratically, and now its track has disappeared from the telescope. So we want to make sure everything is okay with it.”
At least one pilot present in the area confirmed that the emergency tracking device of the plane in difficulty had issued a distress signal. The controller called 911.
The weather 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 plane 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.
