Skydiving Plane With 15 Aboard Crashes on Takeoff in New Jersey

A skydiving plane carrying 15 people crashed after it went off the end of a runway while it was attempting to take off from a small airport in southern New Jersey on Wednesday afternoon, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

The F.A.A. said the crash, which involved a Cessna 208B, occurred around 5:30 p.m. at Cross Keys Airport in Monroe Township, N.J., about 20 miles southeast of Philadelphia.

A spokeswoman for Cooper University Hospital in Camden, N.J., which has a Level One trauma center, said trauma surgeons were at the crash scene triaging the victims.

The spokeswoman, Wendy Marano, said three people were taken to the hospital’s trauma center. Eight others “with less severe injuries” were being treated in the emergency department and four people with “minimal injuries” were in the hospital’s waiting room awaiting care.

In a post on social media, Gloucester County Emergency Management urged the public to avoid the area around the airport, citing a “mass casualty incident” after a plane crash. Several agencies were responding, it said.

6abc, a Philadelphia news station, showed footage of a frenetic emergency response on a rural road, including people being loaded onto stretchers.

A man who answered the phone at Cross Keys Airport, directed questions to a local skydiving company that he said owned the plane. That company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This is a developing story.