Four people died in the crash of small plane that disappeared after departing from a regional airport near Roanoke, Texas on Saturday.

A Texas Department of Safety helicopter located the downed Beechcraft Bonanza late Saturday night in Van Zandt County.

"The plane is completely destroyed," said Ronnie Daniell, Van Zandt Justice of the Peace. "It's just torn to pieces, pretty much, over a wide debris area."

The dead were aboard the aircraft, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Their names have not been released.

FAA spokesman Lynn Lunsford said the Mississippi-bound aircraft took off Saturday morning from Northwest Regional Airport at about 9:40 a.m.

A search started after air traffic controllers lost radar and radio contact with the plane 25 miles southeast of Terrell in Kaufman County.

Read the original story at NBCDFW.com

A graphic from Flight Aware shows the plane had a smooth takeoff headed southeast. Then, over the Terrell airport, it suddenly started an erratic route and stayed in the air for three and a half hours before crashing.

Federal regulators were scheduled to arrive at the crash site Sunday afternoon to begin their investigation.

The tail number of the single-engine plane belongs to Palm-L Aviation LLC. The FAA said the plane was built in 1985.

This is the second fatal crash in two weeks involving a plane that departed the Northwest Regional Airport in Roanoke.

A pilot and flight instructor died September 23 shortly after takeoff. The cause of that crash is still under investigation.

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Updated at 2:48 p.m. ET: White House press secretary Jay Carney says President Barack Obama was informed "in the last hour" of the arrest of FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt and "reacted as you might expect."

Carney referred all questions to the FAA.

Updated at 1:53 p.m. ET: FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt has been placed on leave after he was charged with driving while intoxicated over the weekend, the agency said Monday. 

The Transportation Department, which oversees the FAA, said it didn't learn about the incident until Monday, two days later. Deputy Administrator Miguel Huerta will serve as acting administrator while officials consider Babbitt's "employment status," the Transportation Department said.

Original post: Randy Babbitt, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, was free on bond Monday after he was charged with driving while intoxicated over the weekend.

Police in Fairfax, Va., a suburb of Washington, said Babbitt, 65, was driving on the wrong side of the road when he was stopped at 10:30 p.m. ET Saturday. Babbitt, who was alone in the vehicle, was found to be intoxicated, police said, and was held at a detention center, where he was charged and released on a personal recognizance bond.

Police said that Babbitt wasn't involved in an accident and that he cooperated with police.

Babbitt, a pilot for Eastern Airlines for 25 years and former president of the Air Line Pilots Association, was appointed to lead the FAA in 2009.

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