The passengers of a flight that crashed Friday on I-285 were headed to Oxford, Miss., for a graduation ceremony Saturday at the University of Mississippi, according to the owner of a plane that took off from the airport just before the ill-fated flight.
Doug Alexander, who was also headed to Oxford, said his wife had a brief conversation in passing with the party, noticing their Mississippi hats and greeting them with a “hotty toddy,” part of an Ole Miss cheer. Alexander's plane was initially reported to have crashed.
“It was ironic that both of us were taking off to the same small place this morning,” said Alexander, who runs a consultancy, Transformational Development Counsel. “We took off in perfect conditions, which was the strange thing.”
A spokeswoman for Ole Miss said the school is aware of the crash and that it was in the process of determining any connections to the university. It would not have any comments until then.
Alexander said he left at about 10:30 a.m and reached Oxford in about 90 minutes.
When he landed, he had a number of media calls based on the flight plan he shared with the fatal flight.
“The first reports were that it was our plane,” he said. “That has been corrected.”
-Leon Stafford
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