U.S. Coast Guard Searches For Downed Plane With 8 Aboard

Officials say they've found a debris field in the area where the single-engine plane is believed to have crashed off the coast of North Carolina.

Searchers found a debris field in the ocean off North Carolina where a small plane carrying eight people went down Sunday night, 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, then disappeared from the radar screen.

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 total of eight people were aboard, the Coast Guard said in a statement.