Investigators with the National Transportation and Safety Board planned to continue sifting through the wreckage of a small plane Friday, looking for clues as to why it crashed near a regional airport in Minnesota, killing all eight people on board.

The victims included two pilots and six passengers, all casino and construction executives who were heading to this city about 60 miles south of the Twin Cities for a business meeting.

The Raytheon Hawker 800 went down Thursday morning, shortly after severe weather had moved through southern Minnesota. The weather conditions, as well as the plane’s structure, its systems and other factors, are all being examined by the NTSB, said John Lovell, the agency’s investigator in charge.

A cockpit voice recorder and a flight management system were recovered and sent to the NTSB lab in Washington to be analyzed.

The charter jet, flying from Atlantic City, N.J., to Owatonna, a town of 25,000, went down in a cornfield northwest of Degner Regional Airport, Sheriff Gary Ringhofer said. The wreckage was not visible from the airport, and roadways leading to the site were blocked off. Little could be seen from a hill in the distance.

The debris was scattered 500 feet beyond the airport’s runway. Late Thursday, the Dakota County coroner was on the scene working to identify victims.

Seven people were found dead at the site of the crash, which happened around 9:45 a.m. Thursday. One victim died a short time later at an area hospital, said Doug Neville, Department of Public Safety spokesman.

Two other people who were supposed to be on board did not get on the flight, Neville said.

Atlantic City Mayor Scott Evans said those on board the flight from New Jersey included two high-ranking executives from Revel Entertainment, which is building a $2 billion hotel-casino project in Atlantic City, and an employee of Tishman Construction. Two executives of APG International were also on board, that company said.

The executives were heading to Owatonna for a business meeting with Viracon Inc., a glass manufacturing company that earlier this year was awarded a contract to supply glass to the World Trade Center replacement project.

Local plane crashes

According to the National Transportation Safety Board, 24 plane crashes have occurred in Austin since 1967, including two that resulted in fatalities:

On Sept. 11, 1974, six people died when flying in a Piper PA-23 from Mobridge, S.D. to Rockford, Ill.; “adverse weather conditions” were determined to be the cause.

On April 29, 1967, one person died in a Mooney M20C; adverse weather conditions and alcohol impairment were listed as causes of the crash.

Other local crashes in recent years have occurred in Grand Meadow on Feb. 8, 2008 (one man died after crashing a Cessna into a field) and in LeRoy on Aug. 23, 2004 (helicopter crash, no fatalities).