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More information has surfaced a month after Brett James, a Grammy Award-winning songwriter, was killed in a plane crash<\/a> in North Carolina at the age of 57. <\/p>\n James \u2014 who was piloting a Cirrus SR22T from Nashville, Tennessee to Franklin, North Carolina \u2014 lost control of his aircraft while trying to land on the runway at Macon County Airport (MCA), according to a preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board<\/a> reviewed by PEOPLE<\/a>.<\/p>\n James \u201cintended to perform a 360\u00b0 turn to land\u201d at MCA at around 2:48 p.m. local time on Sept. 18. He was at 6,800 feet at the time. As the plane was descending with a left turn, it went into a \u201ctightening spiral\u201d and plummeted into the ground, the report stated.<\/p>\n Surveillance cameras captured this moment as well as \u201cmultiple witnesses who reported observing the airplane flying at a low altitude near the airport and over a nearby school playground,\u201d the NTSB report stated.<\/p>\n It was also seen \u201crocking from side-to-side\u201d before eventually \u201crolling inverted and descending behind a tree line,\u201d PEOPLE reported, citing the NTSB report.<\/p>\n Air traffic control received no further transmissions from James afterward. His wife, Melody Carole, 59, and her daughter, Meryl Wilson, 28, were also killed in the crash.<\/p>\n James\u2019 plane departed from JCA at 12:41 p.m. and he crashed just over two hours later in an open field in Franklin, about a quarter-mile from MCA, according to flight records<\/a>. No signs of engine failure were found and the plane was recovered for further examination, PEOPLE reported. <\/p>\n James was a prolific songwriter with 27 No. 1 songs under his belt. He started his professional music career as a solo artist when he signed with Arista Nashville\u2019s imprint Career Records in 1995. He released his self-titled debut album the same year and charted three singles on the Hot Country Songs chart. He charted two more singles in 2002 and 2003.<\/p>\n After shifting his focus to songwriting, James penned hits for Billy Ray Cyrus, Kenny Chesney and Martina McBride, Billboard reported<\/a>. He landed his first chart-topping hit with \u201cWho I Am\u201d by Jessica Andrews in 2001. James won a Grammy Award for Best Country Song for writing Carrie Underwood\u2019s smash hit \u201cJesus, Take The Wheel,\u201d which hit No. 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Hot Country Songs chart. The song also won an ACM Award and CMT Award.<\/p>\n James was also twice named ASCAP Country Songwriter of the Year, in 2006 and 2010, and was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2020. Overall, he penned more than 300 major-label tracks including \u201cBlessed\u201d by McBride, \u201cWhen the Sun Goes Down\u201d and \u201cOut Last Night\u201d by Chesney, \u201cIt\u2019s America\u201d for Rodney Atkins and \u201cThe Truth\u201d for Aldean.<\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.masslive.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" More information has surfaced a month after Brett James, a Grammy Award-winning songwriter, was killed in a plane crash in North Carolina at the age of 57. James \u2014 who was piloting a Cirrus SR22T from Nashville, Tennessee to Franklin, North Carolina \u2014 lost control of his aircraft while trying to land on the runway […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2112693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2112693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2112693"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2112693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2112694,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2112693\/revisions\/2112694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2112693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2112693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2112693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}