July 8, 2009

(AP) - Investigators say the pilot of a plane that slammed into a Rockbridge County field had asked an air traffic controller for directions shortly before the crash.

National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Peter Knudson said Tuesday that investigators still don't know how many people were on the single-engine Pilatus PC-12 on Sunday.

Four people were listed on the flight plan for the plane bound from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey to Tampa, Fla.

Knudson says investigators have found microprocessing chips that store some flight parameters, and will try to read the data.

He says they are still trying to put pieces of the plane together.

A spokesman for the family of former Checkers Drive-In Restaurants CEO Daniel Dorsch says the businessman and his wife Cyndie died in the crash.