DENVER—Investigators are studying weather conditions at the time a single-engine airplane crashed in the southern Colorado mountains and killed a doctor and a retired businesswoman from Iowa.
The National Transportation Safety Board disclosed the study in a preliminary report late Wednesday.
The report doesn’t suggest any possible causes for the crash, including weather.
Michael O. Welton, 66, and Roswitha Marold, 70, were killed when the Piper Malibu crashed Jan. 9. Both lived in Waterloo, Iowa.
Officials said Welton and Marold were friends and that Welton was the pilot.
The plane was en route from the Phoenix area to Pueblo, Colo. The wreckage was found the next day at about 9,700 feet elevation in the Sangre de Cristo. It was about 110 miles southwest of Denver and 60 miles west of Pueblo.
Search-and-rescue officials say the wreckage was difficult to find because snow fell after the crash and because the plane appeared to have fallen nearly vertically, leaving few damaged trees.
Welton and Marold were the sixth and seven people killed in small-plane crashes in Colorado since Dec. 15.
