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Two dead after two small aircraft collide mid-flight in McKinney

The story has been updated throughout 

Two people were killed after two small aircraft collided mid-air near Aero Country Airport in McKinney at about 5:30 p.m. 

One plane crashed into a storage facility and the other in the middle of Custer Road, according to KXAS-TV (NBC5). 

Both aircraft were flying under visual flight rules -- conditions generally clear enough to allow the pilot to see where the aircraft is going -- and were not in contact with air traffic control at the time of the collision, Lynn Lunsford, spokesperson for the aviation administration, said in an email. 

When Aero Country Airport opened in the late 1970s, most of the tracts around it were farmland. 

"There was a dirt road," said BJ Boyle, treasurer of the property owners association, told The Dallas Morning News in 2014. "There was nobody."

Though Aero Country is privately owned, it's a public-use facility, meaning that anyone can use its landing strip. Pilots can fuel up or seek maintenance on site.

The airport sits on unincorporated land in Collin County, though some neighbors are part of McKinney. Homes have popped up just east and south of the property, and an industrial area borders the airport to the north.

Since opening, Aero Country has reported two fatal crashes, government records show. In 1997, a pilot died of severe burns after losing control of his plane, which crashed into a line of trees. And in 1983, a passenger died of a fatal head injury after exiting the plane while the engine was still running and walking into the arc of a propeller.