One news source states twin engine turbo prop, second lists as PA-46, FlightAware shows PA-46-500TP in the area.
kens5.com/news/Plane-crashes … 02547.html
story says twin engine, but PA-46 was mentioned in another site,
note; flightaware.com/live/flight/N600 … /KRKP/KAUS
2 Dead, no survivors.
RIP 
Another story claims an experimental aircraft, while another claims twin engined, while another has a picture of N600YE.
Our thoughts and prayers all go out to the victims and their families.
I found a for-sale listing on this aircraft. I don’t know how current it is, but does feature an exterior and two interior photographs.
http://www.skytechinc.com/N600YE.htm
Also, the track log (don’t know if this is accurate) shows the plane at 8000 feet one minute, 1200 the next, then has several duplicate track points. They are positioned a few miles south of Austin International Airport.
Seems I read somewhere that the Meridian had a history of some sort of mechanical problems that has caused quite a few crashes.
You are probably referring to the Malibu/Mirage. Poor pilotage/ADM, and engine mis-management were the predominant causes. The FAA ordered and conducted a certificate review of the airframe and found it to be quite sound.
The crash occurred fairly close to my house (About ~15 miles away) but was unable to get any pictures today to share. Local news had that it was an “experimental aircraft” on their article for quite some time, for some reason.
It was pretty foggy at the time, and we had off and on cold rains all day (Was about 48f all day).
Sad. Perhaps small plane crashes are now ‘experimental’ instead of ‘Cessna’.
I guess the “witness” can be attributed to the mixup involving whether it was a single or twin engine. Even after the fact, that guy is talking about seeing the plane with it’s engines. Very sad - I’ve always had an affinity for those Meridians and would one day love to own one. It looks like the reporter read dcgjedde’s comment regarding the tracklog and altitude. rebel07’s comments at the bottom of the story don’t really help anything either.
“It sounded like the engines were really roaring, like he was trying to pull up but didn’t,” Rendon said. "Then it was just ‘poof.’
That was a quote from the news story. From my experience with these situations, these types of statements are often not particularly useful. For starters, this was a single-engine aircraft, thus “engine”, not “engines” would be the more correct term. Also, accounts I have read suggest that the plane was in a nose-down, ninety-degree descent. Pulling up without leveling the wings would either make the situation worse or possibly could send the plane into a spin.
With a modern, glass-panel aircraft such as this, I don’t know if spacial disorientation could be an issue. It is a common killer on days with weather similar to what was described here. It seems like an engine problem wouldn’t be likely, due to the fact that it was apparently running on impact.
I wonder if a failure of the electronic systems onboard could be at fault? Meaning that all the glass cockpit instruments were down.
From dcgjedde’s post yesterday: “Also, the track log (don’t know if this is accurate) shows the plane at 8000 feet one minute, 1200 the next”.
From the news article today: “According to flight records, the 2006 Piper aircraft had been flying at 8,000 feet shortly before the crash but lowered its altitude to 1,200 feet within a minute.”
While not necessarily funny, it would be interesting the next time one of these crashes happens for someone to write a comment like, “according to the tracklog, the plane went from 1300’ to 91k’ and then back down to 1300’, all within 45 seconds, and it appears that the plane was flying backwards shortly before impact.” - just to see if it would be copied into a news publication.
Icing perhaps?
