Small Plane Crashes in Illinois, Killing All 4 Aboard During Flight from Ohio, Officials Confirm

A small plane with four people on board crashed into a field in the middle of nowhere Illinois on April 19.

IL State Police told USA TODAY that all four people who were in the crash died. The single-engine plane went down in a field near a road in Trilla, an unincorporated town in south central Illinois, at 10:15 a.m. local time, State Police say.

“The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are still looking into what happened,” state police said in a news statement. “The aircraft remained in the roadway with the roadway closed until approximately 5:00 p.m. on April 20, 2025.”

The people who died were named by state police as Ross Nelson, 46; Raimi Rundle, 45; Courtney Morrow, 36; and Michael Morrow, 48. The four people who were killed were all from Menomonie, Wisconsin, and were declared dead at the scene.

As per the Federal Aviation Administration, the plane was a Cessna 180. The crash took place southeast of Coles County Memorial Airport in Mattoon, a city of more than 16,000 people located about 80 miles southeast of Springfield. It wasn’t clear right away what caused the crash.

“My administration is keeping an eye on things while we remember those who were hurt in the plane crash today,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker wrote on social media April 19. “Thank you to the first responders who rushed to the scene.”

Concerns about flight safety have led to the crash in Illinois.

In the spring of 2025, there have been a number of news stories about small plane crashes, but statistics show that these are much more common than disasters involving large airlines.

Three people were killed when another Cessna 180 crashed into a Nebraska river on April 18. And on April 12, six people died when a Mitsubishi MU-2B fell in upstate New York. That same day, three people died when a small plane lost control and crashed into a busy street in Boca Raton, Florida.

Other recent plane crashes have also been in the news across the country. On April 10, a tour chopper in New York City crashed, killing everyone on board. Five people were hurt on April 7 when a small plane crashed into a body of water at an Oregon airport. At the end of March, a small plane crashed into a house in the suburbs of Minneapolis.

These events also happen after a number of high-profile crashes in 2025 that made people look more closely at U.S. flight safety. Even though experts say flying is still very safe, recent fatal accidents have made people wary of it.

According to the NTSB, the number of aeroplane crashes went down from 2023 to 2024.

Two deadly crashes happened in late January. An American Airlines passenger plane and a U.S. Army Black Hawk chopper crashed in the air near Washington, D.C., killing 67 people. Another medical jet crashed in Philadelphia, killing seven. The NTSB is still looking into both of these crashes.

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