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The names of the five people who died in a Central Texas plane crash carrying a pickleball team to a tournament have been released.
On board were four Amarillo Pickleball Club players from Amarillo, Texas, Hayden Dillard, Seren Wilson, Brooke Skypala, and Stacy Hedrick, along with pilot Justin Appling.
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A crashed Cessna plane is seen in a wooded area on Round Rock Road in Wimberley, Texas, Friday, May 1, 2026. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman via AP)
Dan Dyer, president of the Amarillo Pickleball Club, said he played multiple games with four of the five people who died.
“I gave them awards. They were great players. They were going to win games,” Dyer said. “Every weekend there are a lot of tournaments. Some people get the bug; others don’t. But once they get it, they’ll go to the tournament.”
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The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) investigators are on the scene and are acting as lead agencies in the investigation, DPS said in a release Saturday.
But the cause of the accident has not been found.
The plane crashed in Wimberley, a town 40 kilometers southwest of Austin, at 11 pm on Thursday.
A crashed Cessna plane is seen in a wooded area on Round Rock Road in Wimberley, Texas, on May 1, 2026. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman)
Dyer said a second flight was traveling to the event from Amarillo at the same time. Authorities said it landed safely at the airport in New Braunfels, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northeast of San Antonio.
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“I never heard anything from him,” said the second pilot, according to the statement air traffic control noise.
The controller replied, “He started moving in a strange way, and now his track has disappeared from the peak. So, we want to make sure that everything is fine with him.”
At least one pilot in the area confirmed that the plane’s emergency equipment had sent out a distress signal. The controller called 911.
It was mostly cloudy in the New Braunfels area just before the crash, and thunderstorms developed two hours later, the National Weather Service said.
A Cessna airplane crashed in a wooded area on Round Rock Road in Wimberley, Texas, on May 1, 2026. (Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman/AP)
Wimberley, with a population of about 3,000, and New Braunfels, with a population of about 116,000, are tourist destinations in the Texas Hill Country.
I The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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