Was the plane that crashed in the parking lot of a retirement facility near the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Airport a "modified Cessna Golden Eagle" registered to a "shell company in Delaware" named Echelon Air Logistics? No, that's not true: The plane that crashed in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on Sunday, March 9, 2025, was a Beechcraft A36TC with the registration number N347M. This information is included in a preliminary report released by the Federal Aviation Administration on March 10, 2025. According to the FAA and flightaware.com the plane is registered to a company in Manheim, Pennsylvania.
The false claim, which included describing the the plane as "a covert reconnaissance asset" without providing anything to substantiate that, appears in a post on X (archived here) published on March 9, 2025, along with a 0:10 second long video of the burning wreckage. The post was captioned:
Man some interesting info is coming out about this. I am going over some details but I will share what I have for now.
It is being said to be a modified Cessna 4*** Golden Eagle, registered to a shell company named "Echelon Air Logistics," incorporated in Delaware on January 12, 2023. This company has no public footprint no website, no employees listed, just a PO Box in Wilmington and a paper trail leading to a law firm known for setting up discreet entities for intelligence operatives.
The Cessna was equipped with advanced surveillance gear: infrared cameras, signal interceptors, and a compact onboard server capable of real-time data transmission to a satellite uplink. This wasn't a civilian plane; it was a covert reconnaissance asset. Not sure how this will pan out over the course of the week.
This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Mon Mar 10 16:13:00 2025 UTC)
The Associated Press reported on a plane crash (archived here) in Manheim Township, Pennsylvania, near the Lancaster Airport. The plane carrying five people crashed in the parking lot of a retirement community in the afternoon on March 9, 2025. The passengers were transported to local hospitals and there were no fatalities.
The caption of the post on X appears to be an attempt to create a conspiracy about the crash. The post identifies the plane as a "Cessna 4*** Golden Eagle" -- this is false. The plane that crashed in Pennsylvania on March 9, 2025, is identified as a Beech A36TC in a list of preliminary reports (pictured below) from the FAA Aviation Safety Information Analysis And Sharing (ASIAS) system (archived here).
(Source: asias.faa.gov screenshot taken on Mon Mar 10 16:36:47 2025 UTC)
This ASIAS report lists the plane's registration number as N347M. Information about N347M is available at both registry.faa.gov and flightaware.com (archived here and here). Both show the fixed-wing single engine1981 BEECH A36TC plane registered to a company, Jam Zoom Yayos LLC, in Manheim, Pennsylvania. The FAA record shows that this registration number has been used several times in the past on different airplanes. Almost a century ago the registration number was used on a Cessna CG-2 which was deregistered on October 9, 1930.
A photo included in the March 9, 2025 Associated Press article of the plane's wreckage after the fire was extinguished, clearly shows the registration number N347M, as well as the Beechcraft logo (archived here) on the tail.
(Source: apnews.com screenshot taken on Mon Mar 10 17:16:48 2025 UTC)
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims involving plane crashes can be found here.
