NTSB Probes Tennessee Plane Crash Undiscovered for Hours

The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating whether dense fog played a role in the deadly crash of a small plane at a Tennessee airport, where the wreckage went undiscovered for several hours.

The Cessna 172 single-engine plane crashed sometime after 3 a.m. CDT Tuesday at Nashville International Airport. But the crash apparently wasn’t reported until a pilot in another plane saw the wreckage around 8:45 a.m.

Air safety investigator Jay Neylon told reporters at a news conference on Wednesday that the fog was very dense around that time.

He says investigators plan to listen to air traffic control tapes to determine whether there was any communication between the control tower and the pilot, who was the only one aboard the plane and has not been identified.