A single-engine plane, owned by a Nixa skydiving company crashed near the Mount Vernon Municipal Airport shortly after 4 p.m. Saturday, killing two people and seriously injuring two more.

Tony Molinaro, spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration said the single-engine Cessna P206 hit the ground and was destroyed two miles west of Mount Vernon.

The identities of the people on the plane have not been released as of late Saturday.

Molinaro said the plane was owned by Freefall Express Skydiving Inc., based in Nixa.
The company's Web site, http://freefallexpress.com/ says its skydiving operations work out of Mount Vernon Municipal Airport, about two miles west of Mount Vernon and immediately south of Interstate 44.

Molinaro said he had no information about the identity of the people in the plane or how it crashed.

He said the National Transportation Safety Board will conduct the investigation since the crash involved fatalities and teams from the FAA and NTSB were on the way to Mount Vernon as of Saturday evening.

Freefall Express' Web site says the company teaches skydiving and offers tandem jumps, where an inexperienced jumper is tethered to an experienced jumper and the two ride the same parachute to the ground.