Saturday March 31 4:43 PM ET Texas Plane Crash Injures at Least Seven

DALLAS (Reuters) - A skydiving plane carrying 22 people crashed in a field northwest of Dallas on Saturday, injuring at least seven people, authorities said.

Seven people were injured seriously enough to be flown by helicopter to area hospitals, but none had life-threatening injuries, Texas Department of Safety spokeswoman Tele Mange said.

``It was a propeller-driven, single-engine plane. It crashed on takeoff,'' Mange said.

Several other people were treated on the scene or taken by ambulance to a hospital, the Wise County Sheriff's Department said. The plane crashed while taking off in sunny weather around 1:30 p.m. EST from Bishop Field, a grassy runway 9 miles east of Decatur and about 65 miles northwest of Dallas, the Sheriff's Department said.

The plane belonged to a company called SkyDive Texas, Mange said. The National Transportation Safety Board (news - web sites) was investigating the cause of the crash. http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010331/ts/crash_plane_dc_2.html

-- Carl Jenkins (somewherepress@aol.com), March 31, 2001