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A YOUNG pilot has asked air traffic controllers to tell his parents he loved them before he died in a fatal plane crash on Tuesday.
The pilot, 25, made the emotional plea before he crashed his single-engine plane into a Florida State Park near Gainesville.
He purchased the plane just two weeks before the crash.
The young pilot had departed Kissimmee Gateway airport in the Cherokee Piper 180 propeller plane around 12:45 p.m.
His plane crashed around 2:10 p.m. near the town of Micanopy, about 15 miles south of Gainesville, during poor weather conditions.
The Federal Aviation Administration has confirmed the pilot’s death to The U.S. Sun on Wednesday. They said the man died alone.
The pilot’s final words were heard on a radio frequency channel before the plane went down.
“I’m losing altitude,” the pilot said, according to recordings obtained by WUFT.
He then asked the air traffic controller if he should climb or descend and indicated he could not get a clear reading from his instruments.
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“I don’t think I can hold my altitude without descending,” he said over the radio.
He also asked: “How many miles am I from Gainesville.”
At one point the pilot said he was lost in poor visibility and asked the controller to tell his parents he loved them.
Rescuers spent hours combing the area for the crashed plane.
They found the wreckage in a wooded area of Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park on Tuesday night after officials spent several hours searching for the missing plane.
An FAA spokesman has told The U.S. Sun on Thursday that officials are looking into the accident.
“The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board will investigate. The NTSB will be in charge of the investigation and will provide further updates,” a spokesman said.
The FAA has not released the name of the pilot yet.