PITTSFIELD, Mass. (AP) -The pilot of a twin-engine cargo plane was killed early Thursday morning when the aircraft crashed in a field near a busy commercial district of the city.

Pilot Brian Templeton, of Waterford, Mich., was the only person on board, and there were no injuries on the ground, according to police Capt. John O’Neil, who said Templeton was in his mid-30s.

“It’s amazing to me that the plane landed where it did,” said Pittsfield Detective Mark Bushey. “There are buildings everywhere here. I’d like to think the pilot had had something to do with putting it down away from all these buildings and roadways.”

The MU-2 Mitsubishi turboprop, owned by Royal Air of Waterford, Mich., had been carrying a load of screws from Hagerstown, Md., to Bangor, Maine.

It was at 17,000 feet when air traffic controllers in Nashua, N.H., lost radar and radio contact with the plane around 5:40 a.m., said Jim Peters, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.

“Shortly after that, our regional communications center got a call from Pittsfield police about the crash,” Peters said, adding that controllers “had no indication prior to losing communications of any problems with the aircraft.”

According to witnesses, the plane appeared to head toward Pittsfield Municipal Airport when it went down near a General Electric plant, less than two miles from the airport.

Witnesses told WUPE-AM that they heard the engines revving, then the plane went down belly first after spinning several times.

It came to rest, bursting into flames, about 100 feet from a school bus garage in a field bordered by a shopping center, a residential area, a busy highway and the GE plant.

A man who answered the phone at Royal Air’s headquarters in Michigan said the company would have no comment.

AP-ES-03-25-04 1717EST