Coast Guard launches search after plane with 8 aboard crashes off North Carolina coast

Searchers found a debris field in the ocean off North Carolina where a small plane carrying eight people went down Sunday, the Coast Guard said Monday.

Watchstanders received a report of a possible downed aircraft about 4 miles east of Drum Inlet from a Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point air traffic controller on Sunday, the Coast Guard said. The air traffic controller reported that the aircraft was "behaving erratically on radar and then disappeared from the radar screen," the Coast Guard said in a statement.

The single-engine Pilatus PC-12/47 crashed into the water approximately 18 miles northeast of Michael J. Smith Field in Beaufort, N.C., around 2 p.m. local time Sunday, according to an email from the Federal Aviation Administration on Monday. A preliminary accident notification on the FAA's website noted that the aircraft "crashed into water under unknown circumstances."